Faced with the responsibility to take care of her addict, veteran father, headstrong teen Mickey Peck keeps her household afloat.
Set in rural Montana, “Mickey and the Bear” tells the story of a flawed father, and a daughter trying to cope. Camila Morrone is Mickey Peck, an alternatively morose, ambivalent and empathetic teenager in the throes of facing her own life challenges while doing her best to take care of her dad as the child-turned-parent. Drawn to animals in nature, Mickey works at a taxidermist. She hopes for a better future than her parents experienced, so she applies for and obtains a scholarship to San Diego College. Nonetheless, Mickey remains uncertain about which path to take.
James Badge Dale as Hank Peck plays a former marine passing the days immersed in video games, all the while wielding a perverse sense of humor with childlike glee. “Happy Birthday,” he says to his daughter. “Where are you taking me?” Hank drinks constantly, overconsumes multiple of his prescription drugs and possesses various large-caliber sidearms and rifles.
Ben Rosenfield plays Aron Church, Mickey’s self-absorbed boyfriend who treats her as an object of his gratification, while indifferently consuming Hank’s OxyContin on the sly. Wyatt Hughes (Calvin Demba) later enters the picture as Mickey’s other love interest, with aspirations similar to hers. Rebecca Henderson weighs in with a strong performance as Leslee Watkins, a psychiatrist who tries to help Mickey navigate her father’s issues. Hank, however, angrily fails to appreciate the attempts at intervention. His flimsy protestations aside, Hank subsequently abandons enough self-respect to withdraw his dead wife’s social security money that he promised to his daughter. Repeatedly, he demonstrates in vivid fashion the slob he is – or perhaps always was. Over the course of the narrative, it becomes clear that Hank will not change for the better, thus leaving Mickey with a difficult choice to make.
In our age of perpetual war, the military often presents the best option of gainful employment for poor or rural residents. Unfortunately, though their tours of duty may end, their anguish lingers on. Suffering from PTSD, Hank wanders aimlessly like so many other U.S. veterans, twenty of whom commit suicide each day. In all, half a million vets diagnose positive for PTSD. Here, Hank represents but one pathetic example.
Closed down factories, mills and movie theaters dot the scenery. The hamlet of Anaconda resembles numerous other sparsely populated areas across the country – a steady deterioration on full display in the wake of industrial decline. One of the characters remarks pointedly, albeit in an oddly casual manner, that everybody in Anaconda gets cancer.
“Mickey and the Bear” provides a look at the weary existence in one of those largely forgotten small towns sliding slowly and inexorably into irrelevance. Written and directed by Annabelle Attanasio, the film paints a painful and moving coming-of-age portrait in the gloomy, debilitated landscape where much of America now resides.
Now playing in select theaters
