THE GREAT BEAR MINUS TWO. Critics


	LA OSA MAYOR MENOS DOS Miguel Marías I didn't know anything about the author of this film, or about the film itself; I hadn't even heard of it. Yet as I watched for the first time, my interest and curiosity growing as the film progressed, I wondered what was going to happen to these people, and how it would all end. Isn't that suspense ? Who ever said that a documentary doesn't tell a story, or several stories- not scripted per se, but written with a camera, and assembled and clarified later in the editing process? For me, La Osa Mayor menos dos is one of the few authentic documentaries shot lately in Spain, where (it's been said and repeated for the last six years) all of a sudden the documentary is thriving, but at the cost of sloppy, made-for-television reporting with a "correct" or redemptive vision of the world, and by filmmakers who hardly see their subjects as more than fictional characters -not only nonexistent, but implausible and devoid of interest. In the same way that fake money can circulate with the real thing, a name can sometimes obscure the truth, and as such can end up becoming it's own impediment, genre, or label. In the end it matters little if the characters in La Osa Mayor menos dos are themselves or great (albeit unknown) actors playing a role, if the circumstances are those which David Reznak recorded graphically and synthetically, or (and it would be better for them) if it's all a work of dramatic fiction. What we see is very interesting, and it's presented with respect, clarity, conviction and honor. The result is believable, dramatic, upsetting, and occasionally funny. This is why what we see and hear matters to us. It is increasingly more important to authentic documentary films - that is, to those who dedicate themselves to the documentary without renouncing the cinematographic gaze but quite the contrary - that the filmmaker already understand film as an unsurpassable instrument with which we better look, and therefore see and reveal with greater precision and penetration what reality hides and hints at beneath the surface, beyond the moment of filming, to the "projection" as much to the past (whose mark and scar are worn on the inside, or in the face and the movements, patiently portrayed) as to the future (about which as spectators, implicated and involved, we cannot stop asking or worrying ourselves). In this way, the filmmaker becomes a bit like a psychiatrist - a psychiatrist with neither aspirations nor abilities to cure, yet willing to not only listen but also look directly and maintain that look, and to talk until the limits of coherence have been reached. Interested in, respectful of, worried about and responsible for these persons whom the prolonged contact, the hard-won trust, and their incorporation as characters in their own film has made the film in some way theirs as much as it is his. And those of us who are viewers also find ourselves committed, and implicated. Miguel Marías Film Critic


	> The Great Bear Minus Two. By Miguel Marías > Taken from the book of Hilario Rodriguez "Miradas para un nuevo milenio. Fragmentos para una historia futura del cine español". Javier Cortijo > Lucca Film Festival > ABC. Por Javier Cortijo. > Cahiers du Cinema. By Jara Yañez > The last ballad of a sniper. By Sara Brito. Publico > Elusive smoke over blue sky. By Javier Cortijo. ABC > Documented madness. Ana Castaño. Memeber of Escuela Lacaniana de Psicoanálisis. Madrid. > Abdelfatteh FAKHFAKH. Magazine “Le Cinephile". Túnez.