Imagine that you are the last human being on this planet. You see everything around you – trees, rivers, birds, but you never see another human being. You realize that you are truly alone.
Disney veteran Aaron Blaise puts loneliness into a snow bear that walks the unforgiving, white, and hazy tundra, looking for a shape like his own. He covers great white distances, tries to befriend a whale, looks at every other Arctic dweller who’s with his own kind, and yearns; yearns to the point of building a companion.
Snow Bear is a hand-drawn masterpiece, a portal to the golden age of Disney’s 2D animation. It’s a story of longing, a bear’s make-believe, and finding love. With 11,000 drawings, it is also a story about the climate crisis. Polar ice caps are melting fast, and the homes of various species are being washed away without a single fault of theirs.
It is important to note that Snow Bear also employs anthropomorphism – the attribution of human-like qualities to a non-human character, in this case, a polar bear, for relatability. Hence, his loss feels personal, so does his joy, and his search for a companion.
Snow Bear is an echo of a time when Disney dominated the screens with feature-length films and animated series that shaped the childhood and nostalgia of a generation worldwide. A hundred years later, since Disney Animation came into existence, more indie styles have emerged. Yet, a fraction of the ’90s memory still lingers in Aaron Blaise’s hand-drawn short film about a polar bear and the climate crisis.
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