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- INFINITELY POLAR BEAR -
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S et during the 1970s, Infinitely
Polar Bear tells the story of
Cam, a bipolar father who has
to take care of his two young daughters
while his wife (played by Zoe Saldana)
reluctantly moves interstate to pursue
a business degree. It certainly doesn’t
sound like your average movie about an
average family.
“I love this movie, and as strange as
the pitch of what this movie is about
might sound, it really is about family and
is very relatable”, says Ruffalo. “What
family doesn’t have a character in it?”
It was this balance between the
humour and the drama that drew Ruffalo
to the challenging role. He also saw the
appeal in being part of a very real story;
the film is based on the childhood of
writer-director Maya Forbes.
“When you are playing someone who
really lived you are doing a balancing
act,” Ruffalo explains. “What people
come to the cinema for is to see the
actor’s interpretation of the people
they are playing. To make it lively and
interesting, you really have to filter it
through yourself to make it alive and
spontaneous.”
He also believes it was the “honesty”
in Forbes’s screenplay that allowed
the film to be realistic and emotionally
resonant, without being too heavy.
“Mental illness manifests itself in
many different ways. Cam had a lot of
humour and love and it was a good way
to broach a scary subject for a lot of
people, and [that’s] what makes it so
enjoyable to watch.”
As Cam is severely bipolar, Ruffalo
conducted extensive research to prepare
for the role. “Maya was a wonderful
resource for me,” he says. “Her father
was prolific in shooting videos and
photographs and some of the videos he
shot when he was manic really gave a
sense of the sort of emotional rhythm,
and his point of view of the world
from within his mania. I have
also had people in my family
who are bipolar and I have
seen them struggling with
it, so I am not a stranger to it
myself.”
Although it might seem like the
rampaging Hulk exists in a completely
different universe to Ruffalo’s Cam,
there are some similarities. “When Cam
would change, it would be extreme.
The Hulk is extreme”, he says. “[Cam]
is definitely not unlike the Hulk in that
he could turn, in that something would
trigger him and he would turn and then
wake up afterwards and think, ‘oh my
god what have I done?’”
Despite his preparation, Ruffalo
notes that bipolar disorder is a condition
that many still struggle to understand.
“Some of the stuff, I didn’t understand;
his relationship to his family or to
money,” he explains. “So it took me a
while to understand why they saw it as
being easy to give him a Rolls Royce,
but impossible for his family to help him
send his kids to school. So that
took me a long time to get my
head around.”
• Infinitely
Polar Bear
is available on
DVD and Blu-ray
on September 23.