Film: Brother Bear (Disney)

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Brother Bear is one of the lesser-known Disney films. It tells the story of "a boy who became a bear, to become a man". There is also a Brother Bear 2 which includes a female character and romantic plot, but is very much just a sequel extending the story of the first film.

Brother Bear follows a family of three brothers who live in a tribal hunter-gatherer society with stone-age technology - it is set in Alaska immediately post-Ice-Age, but it could equally be in Palaeolithic Europe as the animals shown include bears, moose (elk), eagle and mammoth and spirits manifest in the form of the Northern Lights. The youngest brother, Kinai, is about to come of age - but to reach adulthood and be allowed to add his hand-print to the wall of the communal rock shelter, he must first be allocated a totem animal and an attribute to live by, and demonstrate some progress towards it. He is disgusted when the shaman gives him "The Bear of Love" but shortly the spirits intervene and he is physically transformed into a bear and ends up becoming a "big brother" to an orphaned cub, Koda.

In my opinion, Brother Bear is an excellent teaching resource about the Old Stone Age, because the characters are all fully rounded people such as you could meet today - although totally embedded in their own culture and situation. It allows the viewer to see stone tools, basket-weaving, cave art, shamanism etc in an engaging setting totally removed from unhelpful "Me Ugg" stereotypes, and demonstrates clearly how people with a less developed technology still have fully developed emotions and intellectual life, and that to them, the past was their present-day. Although the direct intervention by the spirits is obviously a fantasy story, allowing that one conceit allows a sensitive presentation of (an imagined) religious belief and practice which further fleshes out the society.

The film strikes a good balance between being fairly light viewing - a lot of time is given to comedy involving the young bear - and sensitive exploration of big topics such as bereavement, family and responsibility.