The bear is the star of “The Edge” (1997). In one of the last great adventure movies to feature live bear action (today, it would be entirely created in a computer), the stunt bear, named Bart, fills the frame with menace.
The practical and CGI effects teams also do impeccable work, and it’s edited into seamless and tense bear attacks. I don’t mean to denigrate Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin in the main human roles, but rather to emphasize how good the bear stuff is, even two decades later.
That said, director Lee Tamahori – an action and suspense specialist – and writer David Mamet obviously aren’t serving up two straight hours of bear attacks. Such moments are peppered throughout, and the bear is less of the point even than the shark in “Jaws.” The central relationship – and ultimately, conflict — is between Hopkins’ Charles, a billionaire with a great mind for theory and trivial knowledge, and Baldwin’s Bob, a fashion photographer.
“The Edge” (1997)
Director: Lee Tamahori
Writer: David Mamet
Stars: Anthony Hopkins, Alec Baldwin, Harold Perrineau
Throw these two men – along with Stephen (“Lost’s” Harold Perrineau) — into the Alaska woods after a plane crash, and how do they survive? First off, by not dying of shame over their situation and instead thinking things through. Charles’ problem-solving and general positive attitude are exactly what any of us would want in this horrific circumstance.
(But I have one logistical/geographical/topographical question: If you’re walking through the woods with a point of reference always in front of you – a mountain peak in this case – is it possible to accidentally circle back to your original point? Wouldn’t you have had to lose your reference point for a long stretch – and even have the mountain peak behind you for a while — in order to complete an accidental circle? Unless the Blair Witch is in these woods, too, this portion of the film is illogical.)
Charles vs. Bob
Mamet does something in “The Edge” that I’m not totally on board with in the wake seeing the movie, but I’m not sure if that’s because of movie-based expectations or reality-based expectations.
After many intense physical and psychological happenings (a near helicopter rescue that isn’t to be, for example), plus the fact that they are hungry and tired, “The Edge” – if it were any other movie of this type — should come to a narrow focus. Charles and Bob should realize what really matters in life: the fact of being alive, and all the possibilities that entails.
Mamet brings up this notion, but he plays around with the cliché like a cat toying with a mouse. Bob contrasts the fresh air and wide-open spaces of Alaska with his hobby of snorting coke off a hooker, implying the self-explanatory difference. Charles – in a great deadpan reaction from Hopkins — jokingly asks him to clarify what makes the experiences distinct.
But “The Edge” actually has the opposite message in mind: that some men can’t change. Through all of this, Bob remains intensely focused on his rivalry with Charles for the hand of Charles’ wife, fashion model Mickey (Elle Macpherson). I had gotten so caught up in the survival story – in a good way, albeit an expected way – that the notion that these two men could do anything except form a deep bond over the shared experience never entered my mind.
It turns out there’s a through-line woven in the background of “The Edge”: that Bob aims to kill Charles all along. Charles notices this before I did, as he asks Bob even before the plane crash, “How do you plan to kill me?” I saw this as a mysterious line: Is there a joking banter between these two over the premise that Bob aims to kill Charles? Or does Bob really aim to kill Charles?
Strange behavior
Some viewers contend that Bob’s strange behavior in not burying the bloody cloth as per Charles’ instruction is not sloppiness but rather a purposeful way to draw the bear to the injured Stephen. If Stephen is killed by the bear, then he’s out of the way when Bob gets around to killing Charles.
It’s a matter of taste, and perhaps the precise calibration of my mood when watching the film, but I found it unsatisfying that Bob remains obsessed with a man-to-man conflict in this intense survival situation. I mean, look, Macpherson is beautiful, but not so otherworldly that Mickey can stand in for the be-all, end-all of life without any characterization beyond the fact that she’s a model.
And by the end – within the parameters of the film — she’s even shallower than we might’ve initially suspected: a woman who married Charles for his money and who is seeing Bob, whom she actually attracted to, on the side.
But to me, the bear is the thing. Nature. Survival against all odds. A friendship forged where there wouldn’t have been one otherwise. The forcing of a new perspective on what matters in life.
Under the keystrokes of Mamet, all of that is a distraction from the point of two men fighting over a woman. Admittedly, I could find what I’m looking for in any other film in the survival genre, and indeed, I admire the flipping of the script in theory.
But I wonder if it truly comes together. The movie’s intense bear attacks and Charles’ smart survival strategies perhaps accidentally undercut what Mamet is going for. “The Edge” is very good, but I wonder if it’s in a different way than Mamet intended.