Art is often known to be very personal, especially when it comes to stories about family. Countless writers and directors have drawn influence from their own lives, whether taking cues from their childhood or their journey to become the artists we appreciate and revere, which is not always the easiest way for someone to develop. However, something that we need to address is that just because a work of art is personal does not necessarily mean that it is actually good, as evidenced by the fact that some of them can be awfully overwrought and misguided if not done correctly. A very distinct case of this comes in the form of Maya Forbes, who has only been at the helm of a small handful of productions. Still, where most of them are actually quite good and wonderfully effective, it is a shame that her most personal project is one of the more ineffectual films of the past few years. Infinitely Polar Bear is not a film that we should beat around the bush when describing – this is a film that is about as mediocre as it gets, which is something I say with a sense of heaviness and a slight feeling of hesitance, considering how closely this veers towards the director’s own upbringing, and it isn’t appropriate to call into question her own experiences, especially since many of the more compelling moments come when she is shedding light on what she and her sister endured while growing up with a father that cared for them, but was so deeply flawed and psychologically unstable, it resulted in many obstacles that young children should not have to face. Infinitely Polar Bear is a film that needed a lot more work, especially in reconciling a very touching story with the actual process of bringing the narrative to life, which is precisely where the film begins to falter, falling apart from its first moments, and never truly recovering until the very end.

Infinitely Polar Bear is Forbes’ manifesto on her early years growing up with a father that was diagnosed with several psychological conditions, which had a profound impact on the life of her family, who were thrown for a loop once this staggering discovery had been made, leading to a series of challenges that none of them had encountered before – or at least that is the approach being taken with this film. I’m not in a position to even consider questioning the validity of the film, or whether the director is using this story as a way to capture her earliest memories, or an example of plumbing the emotional depths of one’s trauma for the sake of artistic expression, which is not inherently wrong, just quite a peculiar trend. My concern is with the portrayal of mental illness, which could have been substantially improved with some slight tinkering to the overall narrative. It is important to note that, by the director’s own admission, this is a film based on her early childhood, which means that a lot of it is clouded by time, the memories likely being hazier and less potent the younger the protagonists – and ultimately, we here have a story about someone commenting on their father’s journey with what appears to be bipolar disorder, but seems to be intersecting with a couple of other conditions that form the foundation for this enigmatic man to whom Forbes was dedicating the film. There isn’t a single accurate way of depicting mental illness in art, and to her credit, the director makes sure that the manner in which she explores the life of someone afflicted with such conditions is compassionate and thoroughly empathetic – it just feels like it is coming from a place of broader sensationalism, as opposed to being a work that actively wants to depict the reality of what these people face. It’s a tricky contrast, and I’m not entirely sure we can say Forbes was all that successful in her overall endeavour to look at the subject, which feels like it pales in comparison to other similar works.

Unfortunately, with a film as character-based as Infinitely Polar Bear, it is always going to be a matter of making sure the right actors are in the roles, which is of utmost importance when dealing with such sensitive, personal topics. This is ultimately where this film encounters its most significant downfall, since it features actors who seem hopelessly lost, even with the person whose perspective fueled the script being there to guide them. Mark Ruffalo is an actor whose performances do not even come close to matching the acclaim he has received – his work is always forced and feels entirely inauthentic. His attempts to be subtle come across as overwrought, and his more dramatic roles are rarely ever convincing. He is a character actor placed in the position of a leading star, which he unfortunately struggles to handle, and Infinitely Polar Bear does very little to convince us otherwise. His performance here is one of his most overly heavy-handed and unnecessarily convoluted, and he seems to be constantly trying to humanise a character that is so contradictory to the roles he normally plays; his best efforts start to feel like they’re actively working against not only his performance, but the film as a whole. It doesn’t help that the two actresses playing his daughters are not particularly good either – and while I am normally sympathetic to younger performers, especially those in their debut, Imogen Woladarsky (the daughter of the director) was clearly cast for convenience rather than effectiveness in playing the part, since her unsettlingly over-the-top performance matches that of Ruffalo, leading to several moments of shrill, unconvincing tension between two actors who completely miss the mark of the film as a whole, leaving the responsibility of salvaging Infinitely Polar Bear solely to Zoe Saldana, who does her best to give a strong performance, but feels like she is fighting a losing battle for the entire duration of the film.

There is a good film somewhere in Infinitely Polar Bear, it is just not actively available, and the search for its nuances comes across as almost entirely fruitless. The worst kind of film are those that not only has potential, but contain elements that could so easily be resolved through a few small adjustments, even the most inexperienced viewer could find potential solutions. This is not the kind of result a professionally-produced film should ever feature, and it’s unfortunately the foundation for this entire project, which was in dire need of not only a better editor but someone who could help iron out the innumerable issues that underpin this screenplay. Primarily, we have a story that is fascinating on its own, but needed a more precise point of view. Throughout the film, we aren’t sure if the focus should be on the character played by Ruffalo, or those of his two daughters – and unfortunately, Infinitely Polar Bear is far too weak to actually account for all of them, meaning that Forbes needed to make the difficult decision of choosing a perspective, since there’s not enough narrative bandwidth to allow for numerous points of view, which is understandable but unfortunate. Secondly, the film feels like it was made without any attention to how its emotions manifest – its a series of episodic moments that take place over an inexplicable amount of time (the way it leaps between periods is absolutely unhinged), and there isn’t any broader destination that the film seems to be interested in venturing towards – it becomes almost unbearably overwrought, and Forbes’ direction doesn’t do it any favours, with every aspect of it gradually starting to become frustrating, which seems like an avoidable problem for a film that is seemingly so simple in terms of its premise.

Infinitely Polar Bear is the kind of film that is not able to overcome its shortcomings, even though there were many opportunities to rise above the flaws that could have easily been resolved with a more concise approach. This is a film that doesn’t work nearly as well as it should, especially in the areas where we see certain ideas manifest which would have been better-suited for a more precise directorial vision (which may be a controversial sentiment, since this was a story based around Forbes’ experiences as a child, and the memories of her father, with whom she clearly had a challenging relationship), since it may have allowed the more intriguing elements to emerge, rather than burying them beneath layers of the most hackneyed, cliched conventions that ultimately weigh the film down and prevent it from being nearly as effective as it was intending. Its overall a film that just doesn’t achieve anything we haven’t seen before, and as callous as it may be, the personal connection between the director and this story does very little to actually produce anything worthwhile, since it doesn’t come across as particularly interesting enough, even as a poignant exploration on the challenges of growing up with a parent suffering from something as difficult as mental illness – if anything, Infinitely Polar Bear only facilitates comparisons to better films that tackle similar subject matter, doing it without the same degree of unnecessary sentimentality, bizarre character development (we never get a clear reading on whether Forbes reveres her father or is working through traumatic memories with which he is indelibly associated, and Ruffalo’s inconsistent performance does not help) and off-kilter directorial decisions that ultimately cause this film to feel like an enormous missed opportunity to be something special.