ALPHA: BOY TO MAN, WOLF TO DOG

ALPHA: Wolf and man contemplate the stars.

Most of the time, as an SFR writer and fan, my head is in the future. But my body was clearly built for the past. I have the chunky construction, sturdy bones and indomitable metabolism of our Paleolithic ancestors. I would have been Queen of the World in the Stone Age!

Maybe that’s why I’m so fascinated with stories of that time: Jean M. Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear series, the film QUEST FOR FIRE, the stunning opening to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. And the film in theaters now, ALPHA, a creative interpretation of how our human ancestors and the wild wolf forebears of today’s friendly canines came to have a single, interdependent story.

Okay, I’m a sucker for animal stories, too—dogs, cats, horses. And the old “humans against nature” schtick. This film has all of that. Plus a decent director in Albert Hughes (one half of the Hughes Brothers of BOOK OF ELI fame) and young actor Kodi Smit-McPhee (Boy opposite Viggo Mortensen in THE ROAD, now grown to adolescence). What’s not to love? Pass the popcorn!

I was on the edge of my seat for most of this film, as young Stone Age hunter Keda is dragged over a cliff on his first buffalo hunt and left for dead by his grieving father. The boy wakes up on the narrow ledge of a sheer rockface, and the first of his many challenges is finding his way down with a broken foot. A sudden rainstorm fills the canyon below with enough water that when he falls (which is inevitable), he’s not killed. (Yeah, convenient, but you have to suspend belief a bit here. It’s a heroic story, after all.)

Keda sets the bones of his foot between two big rocks, splints it, and begins bravely to try and limp home. Until the wolves start tracking him. He fights them off with a stone knife tied to a long stick and manages to injure one. Then, he scrambles up a tree just ahead of snapping jaws. It’s a stand-off, but the pack eventually gets bored and leaves him and the injured wolf behind. After a while he climbs down. He starts to kill the injured wolf, yet something stays his hand. The filmmaker reminds us of what his mother had said, worried about him before the hunt: “He leads with his heart instead of his spear.”

So begins the friendship between human and wolf, tentative at first, and touchy. Keda must bind the wolf’s jaws lest it bite him, but he carries the creature to a cave to keep them safe from hyenas. He hunts and shares food, water and fire while they both heal. He makes it clear who eats first (the human), thus who is alpha. By the time they are well enough to travel, they are friends for life.

Nothing about this process, or about what follows as they make their hazardous way back to Keda’s home, is surprising. The story is predictable and familiar, really, if you’ve seen any of a dozen Disney nature or kids’ films—INDREDIBLE JOURNEY comes to mind, or even OLD YELLER. There are those moments when the pair’s bonds are tested; when their courage is tested. There is the final moment when Keda must stand up for his friend, too, though that is somewhat more muted here than in the usual Disney film of the Fifties or Sixties. It is a new day after all.

But if Keda has returned to his tribe an adult older and wiser in all the ways that matter to a hunting/gathering society, he has also brought his people a gift that will echo down the generations. The wolf he calls Alpha is female, and her pups will soon be hunting alongside their humans, standing guard for them, protecting them, sharing their joys and sorrows. And their descendants will be our steadfast and loyal friends, no doubt, even when we journey to the stars.

Cheers, Donna