REVIEW: Heart of the Beast
Updated: 13 hours ago
Life advice: Find someone who looks at you the way retired combat dog Odin looks at James Belmont (Brad Pitt) in Heart of the Beast. This man’s best friend survivalist tale set in the Alaska wilderness is a beautifully constructed but stressful 101-minute journey. The film from director David Ayer played Out of Competition in the Official Selection of the San Sebastian Film Festival (Sept 18-26), where Pitt made a huge splash with local fans.
The script by Cameron Alexander contains almost no dialogue, while the nearly nonstop action rises and falls like the mountain peaks around Belmont and Odin (the film was actually shot in New Zealand, standing in for Alaska). In the opening act, Belmont lands his water plane and sets up camp by a remote mountain lake. In the film’s only human-to-human conversations, wanderer (JK Simmons) pulls his boat up and stays the night. The scenes allow for Alexander to fill in a bunch of basic information about his main character, who won’t see another human.
We learn that Belmont is a retired army special forces veteran, and Odin is his highly trained combat dog. Both carry the physical and psychological wounds of war—scars on their bodies, shared nightmares and an instinctive distrust of others. There’s a reason they’re out here alone in the mountains. What they do have is each other, and it becomes clear quickly that this is a film about the deep bond between man and beast.
That’s the heart of the story, the reason for Belmont’s fight to live even as nature throws its best and worst at him. When a mid-flight heart attack results in a harrowing plane crash, Odin is flung out mid-air and Belmont plunged under water. Escaping the sunken plane, Belmont finds Odin is still (barely) alive. He dives back into the lake to rescue their supplies and set up camp. You get the feeling he wouldn’t have bothered if Odin hadn’t survived.
Again and again, they save each other. There are falls, broken bones, wild animals, you name it. The land gets the better of Belmont, but he always has Odin—loyal, intelligent, loving Odin. The natural setting is another character, and Ayer and cinematographer Mauro Fiore make the most of their locations, alternating between close-ups of Pitt and Odin and majestic (and no doubt enhanced) landscapes that position the characters as mere specks.
There’s a message here about our insignificance in the face of the relentless and powerful natural world, full of danger, beauty and mystique. Where we find significance, especially after a harrowing experience like war, is in connection. In this case, the connection is between the hearts of man and beast.
A final sequence involving a letter read by Belmont feels out of place with the rest of the film, as if Alexander and Ayer felt a need to explain what they’ve otherwise left viewers to intuit in the rest of the narrative. It’s unfair to Pitt, who gives an understated and credible performance in a highly physical role. And it’s an unnecessary bow on an otherwise pretty complete package.
Originally published by AWFJ.org
Images courtesy of Paramount Pictures, author.
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