HELEN AND THE BEAR (Alix Blair 2024)

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A CLIP FROM EARLY IN THE MARRIAGE FROM HELEN AND THE BEAR

ALIX BLAIR: HELEN AND THE BEAR (2024)

Portrait of a marriage, and an unusual woman

This is a warm and intimate years-long documentary portrait of a great love. When Helen Hooper married Congressman Paul "Pete" McCloskey in 1982, he had been married earlier for twenty-three years, and had four children, two girls and two boys. Helen was twenty-six years younger than Pete. They had no children. They were to have a bond that lasted for forty-two years, till he died at ninety-six. Alix Blair, Helen's neice, a filmmaker, shot this movie over a seven-year period. It's a tale of winding down and saying goodbye, though Helen eloquently tells the camera you can't say goodbye. "I just told him the other day," she says. "You can't actualy go...because, a, I need you as my best friend and my buddy and my partner in crime, and I need you as my lawyer. You know? You can't go checking out on me yet."

As she says this she is beautiful and fresh-faced, looks blond rather than grey-haired, and she smiiles and laughs. This is the portrait of a great love. It's a relationship that has worked for all these years, even when for times it didn't, particularly because Helen had to live her attraction to women, which Pete called adultery and then, because it went on for years, said they should divorce, but that she would have to be the one to do it - and she didn't. He had sexual affairs, but Helen's involvement with one woman was deep and went on for years. That hurt. But it began because he was most of all wedded to politics, as politicians are, and is what ended his first marriage. She also did drugs, snuck off to smoke, and did coke. At one point Helen and the Bear, senior citizens, in the film, take some drug together, perhaps edibles.

Occasionally the filmmaker comments, but it is very rare, and she provides no guideposts. This isn't about the Paul McCloskey who's in Wikipedia. You can read Wikipedia for that (but it is almost zilch on "Personal Life"). As another reviewer puts it, Paul McCloskey, who started as Republican but switched to Democrat in 2006, was "the kind of 'conservative' who'd be rejected by the GOP now—he co-authored the Endangered Species Act, opposed the Vietnam and Iraq wars, and has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s policies." In short, he's a complicated, basiclaly maybe pretty good guy, who got the cold shoulder from the hawkish, self-satisfied conservative media personality William F. Buckley on his show "Firng Line" in a particularly assholish moment. (Helen and the Bear both swear sometimes, but only when they need to.) He also was a Marine who attained the rank of colonel and was awarded the Silver Star and the Bronze Star in the Korean War. Helen was originally one of his aides for several years when he was still in the House of Representatives, and then they got married.

When you see them together you see the love reaffirmed all the time. It's also a ménage, for this is the portrait of a marriage that includes four dogs, two horses, hens and various other farm animals that Helen takes care of. She is in her mid sixties when the film begins and doing hard physical work all the time. Her love of animals is one of the sub-portraits, and the many moments with the ever-present dogs, the discovery of a large, handsome dead porcupine, the time when she has to call the vet and share sadly in putting down the old horse that's on its last legs, are essential eminations of this strong, warm woman.

She says the Bear has never even once gone out to see the animals. He lives in the big, cozy farm house, with its large wall of books, its couches, and its big TV screen where they stayed up day and night following the big midterm elections of 2018. Clearly the man is still deeply involved in poltics up until when it becomes evident he must have had a stroke because he can't arrange the letters in the word "SOCK." There is something durable about McCloskey. He never lost his big eyebrows, his hair, his reassuringly placid, fixed mouth, his involvement in California politics. They never lose their closeness and their need to kiss each other on the mouth.

This is a road picture for a while, when Pete and Helen get into their camper van and take a trip to a vacation house in New Mexico, a drive that Helen declares "a wonderful trip." They have a good time and see the daughter, who he sends off on the train to support a political campaign in Virginia. It's the daughter who tells the camera as a parting aside that this is, indeed, one of the great marriages.

This is a film whose personal reference is Helen and her complicated way of life that included women. She is nearly always buoyant and spirited, full of a joy in life that must be one of the contributors to this happy union Alix Blair has so memorably recorded. But she also has several moments when she declares herself depressed, and she must have been low in spirits earlier in her life as well. Now, one can guess logical reasons. The farm is too much work for her. She repeatedly affirms, as he does, that she is glad they married, that they would do it again. But another stage is coming, he will be gone, and she can't look forward - she tells the camera this - to sleeping in the bed without him. (We see the big, cozzy bed: Blair's camera gets close to it.)

Ultimately it feels like the approaach of this film works because it makes us eavesdroppers and that's the best way to get the feel of these two lives lived so smoothly together.

Was this the life that Helen wanted? To put that question in perspective, there are single lines held up on screen, far apart, from her journals, which we've seen her earlier gathering to read and which seem to span more or less the whole marriage. There are times when she questions. But in the present we see the constant affirmation of the love, a bond beyond understanding. It just is. Pascal said it: "The heart has its reasons that the reason knows nothing of." Helen and the Bear stayed tuned to their hearts so reason didn't ever get in the way for too long.

Helen and the Bear, 81 mins., debuted at Toronto (Hot Docs), Apr. 28, 2024. Also notably perhaps, Frameline, Jun. 23, and Nashville, Bend, Santa Fe, New Orleans, Big Sky. Coming Mar. 25 to DOC NYC Selects, Apr. 5 and 6 toCleveland, and Full Frame. It won an editing award and received four other nominaitons.