‘Heart of the Beast’ Shows Why Man Should Not Be Alone

Why are we so compelled by “solitary man surviving in the wild” stories? We love TV shows like Alone, Man vs. Wild, Outlast, or the long-running Survivor (season 51 premiered this week!). We love books like Into the Wild and Wild.

The draw is multifaceted. Perhaps the suffocation of urban density and technological stress leads us to long for a radical quietness only interrupted by the choruses of creation. Too much swiping screens inflames our longing to touch grass.

In a spiritually uprooted secular age, sublime encounters with raw nature can also appeal as substitutes for religious transcendence and alternative sources of meaning. For men especially, something is primally appealing about getting into the dangerous wild and testing ourselves. For others, the anxieties and painful scars of life “on the grid” prompt a fleeing to nature as escape.

This last dynamic—fleeing the difficulties of human society and finding solace off the grid—has inspired the premise of several Alaska-set films. Consider Grizzly Man (2005), Werner Herzog’s unforgettable documentary about Timothy Treadwell, who lived among bears in Katmai National Park—until one killed him. Or recall Sean Penn’s stellar adaptation of Into the Wild (2007), a tragic but beautifully rendered film about Chris McCandless’s ill-fated journey into the Alaskan wilderness.

New film Heart of the Beast, directed by David Ayer (Fury) and starring Brad Pitt, is the latest example. The film follows a former U.S. Special Forces military veteran, James Belmont (Pitt), who lives alone with his German Shepherd Odin in the rugged beauty of Alaska. But when he crashes his single-engine plane after appearing to have a heart attack midflight, he and Odin must try to survive, injured, in an unforgiving landscape.

Man vs. Nature

On the surface, Heart of the Beast (PG-13) is a simple movie. Man and dog bond in a survival adventure. While occasionally unrealistic (the CGI bears, wolves, and moose look very fake) and thematically bleaker than I think it’s meant to be (more on that below), the film was pretty compelling.

In what’s essentially a one-man-show survival movie, similar to James Franco in 127 Hours or Robert Redford in All Is Lost, Pitt is impressive. We don’t know a lot about Belmont’s story, aside from a few flashbacks to war-zone trauma. But we can surmise from the weariness in his eyes that he’s seen many horrors and endured much loss.

The fact that his sole companion is a dog speaks volumes. Pitt speaks with another human (J. K. Simmons) only once in the movie. Most of the time, he speaks only to Odin, who can’t speak back but still communicates powerfully with his eyes and movements.

What’s most effective about this movie is its tone: how lonely and solemn it feels—almost elegiac. Ayer structures the narrative such that we know at the start how the film will end. Everything we watch is colored by foreboding and lament.

Anthropological Confusion

A movie about a man whose only companion in life is a dog, however sweet that bond might be, is an unavoidably sad movie. In the beauty of the setting (“Alaska,” but actually filmed in New Zealand’s jaw-dropping South Island), Belmont’s loneliness is all the more acute.

To him, life off the grid may feel like the only viable path—as it did to McCandless. But in both cases, the “freedom” of the solitary path only partially heals, and in some ways exacerbates, pain. It is not good that man is alone (Gen. 2:18). A dog, however blessed a companion, cannot replace human community. “Man’s best friend” is a misnomer. Man’s best friend should always be another human.

A movie about a man whose only companion in life is a dog, however sweet that bond might be, is an unavoidably sad movie.

The consolation and companionship of pets is a real common-grace gift. But a whole movie of a man-dog relationship serves only to reinforce the sad state of human connection in today’s world, as well as our growing anthropological confusion.

It’s a world where neighbors rarely look each other in the eye or strike up a conversation—unless the neighbor is walking a dog. It’s a world where 82 percent of pet owners see their pet as their child (“fur babies”) and 43 percent of Gen Z and millennials pet owners say they’d prefer to only have pets, not actual human children. It’s a world where killing off a canine character in a movie is a far greater offense than killing off a human.

Pets aren’t the problem. The problem is the way we’ve elevated pets as substitutes for—or superior to—human connections. Heart of the Beast reinforces the anthropological confusion in its title, which at various points alludes to Pitt’s human heart (is he too just a “beast”?) and the dog heart of Odin (a “beast” who sometimes behaves more humanely than the humans). Is the man in the movie altogether different from the dog? It’s not clear.

Sad Descent into Isolation

Belmont did at one point have a robust human community of fellow soldiers, but he lost them all in war. In one scene, he toasts a beer to his fallen comrades (“Miss you boys”). We don’t know if he was ever romantically attached. By all accounts, Odin is now his only relational attachment.

Just as Into the Wild shows the sad descent from vibrant human community into solitary life, Heart of the Beast sounds a similar note. The movie left me feeling burdened for the growing numbers of desperately lonely, friendless people (men especially) in today’s world—people whose only companion is a pet, or whose only peace is in the wilderness. Culturally, we romanticize the idea of a Thoreauvian Walden experience, but in practice, reclusion leaves us less human. The “freedom” of unattachment and autonomy always becomes a burden.

It’s noteworthy that in one scene, Belmont reads Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a narrative that ponders the viability of humanity in a dog-eat-dog world of brute survival. Heart of the Beast grapples with similar questions but falls short of satisfying answers.

Guiding Today’s Aimless, Wounded Men

Early in the film, the camera takes notice of one of Belmont’s tattoos: a compass. It’s ironic because this is a man who has clearly lost his way. Sure, he’s pretty skilled at navigating the wilderness using a map and the sun. He can hunt and fish and survive. But spiritually and existentially, he’s aimless. His only “true north,” it seems, is his canine companion. The past—both nostalgia and grief—occupies his mind. But the future? Nothing there to mobilize him.

The ‘freedom’ of unattachment and autonomy always becomes a burden.

Yes, Belmont is traumatized. For so many veterans who struggle with PTSD and other mental-health ailments, reintegrating into society can be challenging. Another film that captures this well is Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace (2018), about a PTSD-struggling veteran (Ben Foster) trying to survive off the grid with his teenage daughter. Both films empathize with the mental-health struggles of their leading men. But neither film lets these men fully off the hook. They have agency, and the supportive people (or dogs) around them can only do so much to help. A choice to escape into wilderness and shun human community is a choice that often leads to self-inflicted ruin.

Watching these films, and pondering the lonely fates of men like Belmont, or Treadwell, or McCandless, should be galvanizing for the church. A world of men like this is out there—isolated, wounded, wandering, seeking meaning. How might we lovingly intervene and invite these men into community? In a world of wanderlust and aimless escape, we can give men real hope and a “true north” reason to commit to a path.