Helen And The Bear (2025)- Using Your Golden Years To Discover Who You Really Are

If you’ve been paying attention to the news, and the way funding has been getting cut, you’ll know that documentarians are concerned about the future of their genre. Often these journalistic looks into various facets of our world are funded through grants, and if the grants go away, or a project is perceived as being a DEI film, it may not get funded. It’s a good thing then that Helen And The Bear is already out there in the festival circuit, because a film about a septuagenarian considering her own sexual identity while still caring for her older husband, a former politician, and a democrat who remains connected to the ideology of his party, probably would be the first film to get defunded. But it doesn’t make this story less interesting or important, and it certainly doesn’t mean films like this should stop being made. I would love to see a film like this get audio description, because it isn’t a talking head documentary, where dialogue fills up the space. there is plenty of time to wax poetic on visuals, just shots taken that I can’t connect with because I can’t see what is in frame.

But, I took on Helen And The Bear, assuming it had no audio description, and I did so because the story of this couple who were at one point political opposites, reminded me of my own parents, who were on the other side as well. it reminded me of a different time when the stakes were different, and it felt like we could have basic conversations, because everyone had access to the truth, and it hadn’t skewed and devolved into madness. Now, it seems impossible to have a politically divided family, because inevitably you have to say “No, they aren’t eating the cats and dogs.” When 30 years ago, everyone knew they weren’t eating the cats and dogs. No one chased the version of the truth that fit them, they just found truth.

Between watching Helen’s husband delighted to discuss his victory supporting an opponent to Devin Nunez, or hear the couple proud to be 5th generation and 4th generation native Californians, or Helen’s journey to buy cigarettes in the first state to make the biggest crackdown on them, Helen isn’t so much a story about political radicalism, or queer identity, as it is making the most of your twilight years. that’s all they are trying to do, at the end of the day, is not fade off without a trace, or resign themselves to a remainder of a lifetime of shooting the breeze. These are two people not content with just being content. I think that’s what is captured in Helen and the Bear that resonated to me without audio description, this promise that if we are determined enough, we can continue to evolve and make our life worth something regardless of our age.

Helen and the Bear mixes politics with identity, reminding us of simpler times when coexistence actually flourished.

Fresh: Final Grade: 7.6/10