“What would you do if you discovered that your life as you know it is a lie?”
Brigsby Bear is not the first film with this ponderous question as it’s premise. However, the tale spun by writers Kyle Mooney and Kevin Costello asks a follow-up that adds a…quirky twist:
“What if the life you knew was a children’s show about a space-traveling bear that teaches you math – created by your kidnappers in order to brainwash you?”
James Pope (Mooney) lives with his parents in an underground bunker where they avidly work on solving a mathematical theorem. When he isn’t studying his arithmetic, James is glued to his grainy television, awaiting with baited breath each new episode of his favorite show: Brigsby Bear.
One night, as James sits atop the bunker, gas mask on (his parents tell him the air is poisonous), red and blue lights appear on the horizon. In a matter of hours, his parents have been arrested for kidnapping, and it is revealed that James has been missing for some twenty-odd years.
Ushered into the real world, James clashes with his real-life sister, Aubrey (Ryan Simpkins), who begrudgingly takes him to a party. Here he meets Spencer (Jorge Lendenborg Jr.) the only person who takes an interest in his passion for Brigsby. When James discovers Spencer is handy with a camera, the duo set out – with the help of their friends – to finish the show’s intergalactic adventures with a Brigsby Bear film.
At it’s core, director Dave McCary’s feature debut is a unique (and casually dark) story about making your first film. It might have a “kidnapped youth enters real world” backstory, but the main focus revolves around James and Spencer’s Brigsby movie and the challenges they face making it.
To that end, the film does a wonderful job capturing the spirit of such an endeavor. With low-budget, indie filmmaking on the rise, the do-it-yourself collaboration between Spencer, James, Aubrey, and their cohorts is an experience well-known amongst those who have undertaken similar projects.
But the taboo nature of their movie – given the fact that Brigsby Bear was a brainwashing tool used by James’ captors – makes it into a story of rebellion as well. The drive to undermine the mainstream and say something unique and from the heart creates a go-get-‘em mentality that any audience can rally behind.
Yet it’s the unhinged basis of James’ story that winds up leaving something to be expected from Brigsby. Mooney and Costello created the world in which their main character is initially raised with such care and detail that, once both James is plucked from it, begs to be explained.
There’s this theorem that James’ captors are trying to solve, though what it is or why it must be solved remains unexplained. Their insistence on James studying his math (and therefore helping them) is left unanswered as well, along with their cultic rituals and sayings. Each night before dinner a sort of prayer is said that ends with “may our minds be stronger tomorrow” and handshakes exchanged. Then it’s lockdown and lights out, only to rinse and repeat the next morning.
It’s easy to see that James feels trapped by his life, with Brigsby his only outlet. He blogs about the new episodes on his ancient computer (though his online “friends” are later revealed to all be his captor mother) and speaks of nothing but the show at dinner. At night, when his parents are asleep, he’ll sneak out with a gas mask and stare at the desert and the empty horizon.
Still, it would have been enlightening to know more about the world James clearly wanted to be free of. What made it so very compelling that he wanted to make a movie out of it?
In a Q+A panel at the American Pavilion during this past May’s 70th Cannes Film Festival, McCary mentioned that one of his favorite parts about making the film was putting together the Brigsby show, taking influence from such TV staples as Teddy Ruxpin and the original series of Star Trek.
This is visible in the meticulous care given to creating a low-budget, childishly entertaining vibe to the show, but leaves the world in which it was created hardly delved into. Sure, we know there are peculiar rituals, strict curfews, and even animatronic foxes involved in James’ underground family life, but what were his captors up to?
It can at least be inferred that he wasn’t treated poorly, as the drive to create a Brigsby film outshines any resentment he might feel for the people who kidnapped him – and created it. In fact, he later goes on (and this is a spoiler) to enlist his captor father (Mark Hamill) in voicing the character of Brigsby in his movie. Any emotional or psychological scarring is either absent or held well in reserve.
There’s James’ love interest, too – Arielle Smiles (Kate Lyn Sheil) who plays both the Smile Sisters, aides of the eponymous main character, on Brisgby Bear. She’s the only girl James has ever had any sort of contact with, and he’s been in love with her for what we must imagine was his entire adolescent life. Yet, during the production of the Brigsby film, there is only one brief interaction between them.
The moment they share – a coffee between a kidnapped man-child and his TV love (who, in reality, is a struggling actress/waitress conned into being a part of a brainwashing scheme) – is incredibly powerful, and the scene itself carries that weight. But once James is returned to his home by police, Arielle is essentially forgotten by the story.
Regardless, I’m not about to say I know how to make a movie about a kidnapped man obsessed with a fictional TV show who then decides to make an indie film in a brave new world he knows nothing about. McCary, Mooney, and Costello made a pretty good go at it, and produced a solid first film.
Overall, Brigsby Bear is fun, weird, and charming, too. James brings together souls all with their own dreams and troubles to make a movie about the crux of his existence, an absurd kidnapping/brainwashing that secluded him from the world for around two decades. You’ll root for him, and yet you’ll root for them, too. Through the creation of the Brigsby movie, everyone comes to age in their own fashion (some far later than others), leaving something behind for every viewer to take home with them.