Belle and Sebastian (2013)

Belle and Sebastian (2013) Full Recap

High in the French Alps, a seven-year-old boy named Sebastian follows an old shepherd up the mountain. The shepherd's name is Cesar, and he's the closest thing to a grandfather Sebastian has ever had. They're tracking a wild animal the villagers call the beast because it has killed three sheep in a single week. Then, Cesar finds something that makes him swear out loud.

Hunters have shot a mother, Shamoa, in the middle of summer, and her baby is stuck alone on a cliff. Caesar ties a rope around Sebastian and lowers him down the rock face. The boy swings over a huge drop, but he isn't scared at all. He reaches the ledge, tucks the tiny shamoir into his backpack, and tugs the rope.

Cesar hauls him back up, and Sebastian comes over the edge, cheering. Back at the sheepfold, Cesar introduces the orphan to one of his goats. Sebastian holds the little one close to her belly, and after a few nervous tries, it starts to drink. Sebastian grins and says a baby that small could never survive without a mother.

Cesar says it's a good start, but it's too early to celebrate. Then he sends Sebastian down to the village to help Angelina. Straight down the path with no detours. On the way, they run into a group of hunters. One of them, Andre, has a bloody bite on his leg. He says the beast jumped him.

Cesar can't resist. He asks who shoots a mother shamoto in the middle of summer and the men tell him to drop it because they need his help catching the beast. Later, Sebastian is up on the hillside alone when he sees it. A huge filthy gray dog is standing on the rocks above him.

Everyone says it's a monster, but it doesn't attack and it doesn't growl. It just stares at him with tired eyes. Sebastian stares back, then talks to it like an old friend. Cesar finds him standing there frozen and asks if he's seen the beast. Sebastianne says nothing. The hunters walk him back toward the village.

On the way, Andre jokes that Cesar will be drunk in 3 hours. Sebastian snaps that at least Cesar doesn't shoot Mother Shamoir and that the beast probably bit Andre because he smells like a goat. It's July 1943 in the village of San Martan and France is under German occupation. As Sebastian comes down the street, German trucks roll into the square.

Angelina, Cesar's niece, pulls him aside and tells him to run and warn Guom, the village doctor who's coming back along the mountain path. Sebastian asks if Guom will be arrested. She just tells him to go. Inside the bakery, a German officer named Lieutenant Peter Brawn orders Angelina to supply 30 kilos of bread a week for his men.

She asks where she's supposed to get the flour. He says orders are orders. Angelina doesn't hide what she thinks. Real soldiers fight wars. They don't rob bakeries. Bronn just smiles and says goodbye. In the square, Bronn questions the mayor. He knows someone in San Martan is smuggling Jewish refugees over the mountains into Switzerland at night.

He compares them to rats running over the passes. Then he warns the mayor not to treat him like a fool and demands the names of everyone involved. The mayor says nothing. Sebastian sprints up the trail, jumping over rocks and finds Guom just in time. The doctor hides what he's carrying and the two of them walk back down past the soldiers like nothing happened.

Bronn stops them. He's sure someone crossed the border again last night and he promises he'll catch every one of them. That night at dinner, Sebastian asks Cesar if his mother will come home for Christmas this year. Cesar always says she's in America, and Sebastian believes America is just over the mountains.

Cesar mumbles that he's never been to America. Sebastian laughs because it's right there, just behind the peaks. Before bed, Sebastian asks Angelina a question. Has anyone actually seen the beast kill a sheep? Angelina thinks about it. Cesar showed everyone the dead sheep, but no, he never saw the attack.

The next morning, Cesar sets steel traps all around the sheepfold. Sebastian asks, "What if the beast isn't the one killing the sheep?" Cesar tells him a story. A shepherd in another valley got a dog to guard his flock from wolves, but he beat it, and the dog ran off and went wild. Cesar is sure this is the same dog.

Sebastian goes looking for Andre, who's cutting wood deep in the forest. And Andre isn't happy to see the kid who said he stinks. He helps him pull a stick out of the logs, then asks about the shepherd, and Andre tells him the truth. The man kept the dog on a chain shorter than 2 m, beat it, and sometimes didn't feed it for days.

"No wonder it went crazy," Andre says. "Nobody is born mean, not people and not animals." Sebastian heads straight up the mountain and shouts into the rocks. He knows the dog is there. He warns it that Cesar has put traps around the sheepfold. Then the big white dog finally steps out, and this time it doesn't run away.

Sebastian leads the dog up the hill like he's walking a pet. He shows it one of Cesar's traps and makes it sniff the metal again and again. He wants it to remember that smell forever. The dog sniffs, looks at him, and seems to understand. Sebastian sits down next to the dog and tells it he knew all along it wasn't the one killing the sheep.

Then they watched German soldiers marching along the road below. Sebastian explains they're here to raid every farm in the valley. They even took jam from Andre's mother on a high ridge. Sebastian points at the snowy peaks in the distance. "America is right behind them," he says, and that's where his mother went.

Angelina gets angry whenever he brings it up. He hopes his mother comes back for Christmas with a present. He wants a watch with a compass inside. That evening, Sebastian tells Angelina he saw Guom heading for the pass with a woman carrying a baby. Angelina tells him to forget what he saw because it's grown-up business.

Sebastian notices she's upset, so it must be dangerous. Then she asks where the sausages on the table came from, and he tells her she's better off not knowing. At the doctor's office, Angelina finds out Guom is planning another crossing next Wednesday. She wants to help. Guom refuses because he's trying to keep her safe.

Angelina says she's tired of being left out and that it seems the whole village knows his secret except her. She also tells him Sebastian saw him on the trail. Up at a clear mountain lake, Sebastian drags the dog into the freezing water and scrubs it clean with his bare hands. When the dirt washes off, the dog underneath is pure white and beautiful.

Sebastian decides it's a girl, and he names her Belle, which means beautiful. Belle shakes the water all over him. He takes Belle to his secret hideout, an old stone hut in the rocks. Nobody else knows about it. He shows her a secret tunnel that leads straight outside. If she ever needs to hide, he tells her she should come here.

Then Cesar shows up at the hut. He wants to know what Sebastian is hiding. Sebastian stands in the doorway and swears it's nothing. Cesar doesn't buy it. So from now on, Sebastian has to work with him at the sheepfold every morning. One afternoon, two German soldiers start shooting at deer on the mountain.

Sebastian runs at them and shouts that they're not allowed. One soldier grabs him by the collar. Then Belle comes flying out of the rocks and knocks the soldier down. She bites his arm and breaks his rifle before running off. Lieutenant Brawn is furious with one man hurt and a rifle broken.

He asks Sebastian what he was doing up there and the boy says he was fishing without a rod. Brawn mocks France as a land of freedom and lazy kids and Cesar fires back that the Germans lost the last war. Then Brawn orders a hunt for the beast with 50 men at 8:00 in the morning. At home, Cesar looks Sebastian in the eye.

He's seen dogs like that before, and he knows people who tried to save them. It never works. He tells Sebastian the hunt will be on the Glantier slope, so he must stay in the Mayhem Valley, where it's safe, Sebastian promises. The next morning, 50 men gather with rifles and hunting horns.

Cesar stands in front of them and quietly sends them to search the Magi Valley instead. Meanwhile, Sebastian leads Belle straight into the Mayhe Valley. sure they'll be safe there because Cesar told him so. He even takes her down to the river to look for trout. Then the horns start blowing and a long line of men comes marching through the valley.

Sebastian can't believe Cesar lied to him. He screams at Belle to run, but Cesar grabs him and holds him back while he kicks and begs. "She's my friend," he shouts. Belle races across the rocks. Someone spots her and shouts. A rifle cracks and a hunter yells that he hit her. Sebastian gets home in the middle of the night.

Cesar has locked him in his room so he can't run off again. Angelina finds out and is disgusted with her uncle. She tells Cesar he's too drunk to know what he's saying. From behind the door, Sebastian says he will never forgive him. But Sebastian escapes anyway and runs to his hideout.

Inside, he finds Belle lying on the floor, wounded but alive. She made it all the way there on her own just like he told her to. He hugs her and cries with relief. He brings back a bottle of Cesar's homemade wormwood brandy, which Cesar uses on every cut his sheep get. Sebastian pours it on Belle's wound and she whimpers.

Then he touches her head. She's burning up with fever. In the village, Sebastian asks Guom how to treat a really bad fever just out of curiosity. Guom explains that an infected wound needs shots or the patient could die. When he figures out the patient is the beast, he says he has to tell Cesar.

Sebastian says that if he does, he'll tell everyone that Guom leads refugees over the mountains. Guilom follows him to the hut and Belle growls at the stranger because people have hurt her too many times. Sebastian lies down beside her and calms her. Gom says the wound isn't deep, but the infection worries him.

Belle won't let him near her with a needle, so he hands the syringe to Sebastian. The boy takes a deep breath and gives her the shot himself. Winter comes to the mountains. On a snowy road, Bronn pulls up beside Angelina and offers her a ride and she says no. He reminds her that the SS has given him full power here to destroy the refugee network.

So, she gets in. When he asks if she's always this quiet, she says only with Germans. Belle is healthy again, bounding through the fresh snow with Sebastian, she knocks him over and licks his face until he can't stop laughing up on the mountain. Cesar sets the little shamoir free, now big enough to live on its own.

He watches it run off and whispers for it to go. At home, Sebastian and Angelina decorate for Christmas. Sebastian asks how his mother will know he wants a watch with a compass. Angelina goes quiet. She tells him a watch isn't the most important thing in life. What matters is that his mother thinks of him wherever she is.

That night, Guom leads a Jewish family through the snow to a hidden cave. The father tries to pay him 300, but Guom tells him to keep it since they'll need it more. All that matters is getting them to Switzerland. Then they hear something outside and Guom steps out alone. It's a pack of wolves, their eyes shining in the dark.

They chase Guile across the snow and he slips and falls hard down a slope. The wolves close in. Then Belle charges out of the dark and fights them off one by one until they run. Sebastian finds Guom lying in the snow with a broken ankle. Belle pulls him on a sled all the way to Angelina's house.

Guom tells them the truth. It was the wolves killing the sheep all along, not Belle. Cesar hears it, too. He looks at Belle, then at Sebastian, and says he's sorry. Guom can't walk, and the family in the cave is waiting. Angelina says she'll guide them herself because she knows the way.

Guom forbids it, but she reminds him it's her life and her choice. She grabs her coat and walks out. At the cave, tells the family she's their new guide, and they'll leave at dawn. Then, Sebastian pops up behind her. He followed her the whole way. She can't send him back alone in the dark, so he spends the day there, and he makes friends with the family's daughter, Esther.

Sebastian tells Esther that in 2 days she'll be across the mountains in America. Esther laughs and says, "It's Switzerland over there. America is far away across the ocean, and you need a big ship to get there." Sebastian's smile slowly fades. He asks her to write the word America for him, and she does.

Down in the village, the Germans are having Christmas dinner with French wine. One officer asks Brawn when he would move refugees if it were him. Brawn thinks about it on Christmas day when nobody expects it. He orders patrols up the mountain at once with radios to report every hour.

Back home, Cesar finds Sebastianne in the empty school room staring at a globe. He's found America, and it's nowhere near the mountains. It's on the other side of an ocean. Cesar sits down beside him and hands him a present. It's a pocket watch with a compass inside. Then Cesar finally tells him the truth.

Years ago, he found a young woman alone in the snow about to give birth. He carried her to a shepherd's hut, but she didn't survive. He promised her he'd take care of her baby. And the moment he held Sebastian, he loved him like his own son. "His mother is in heaven now," Cesar says.

But her love is always with him, and so is Cesar. At dawn on Christmas day, Angelina leads the family up the mountain with Sebastian and Belle. Then a voice shouts her name. It's Brawn coming up behind them and yelling for them to stop. His shouting echoes off the slope and the snow above them starts to slide.

An avalanche comes roaring down. They dig themselves out, shaken but alive, and Caesar, who followed them up the mountain, helps pull the family free. Then Belle starts digging in the snow nearby and uncovers Brawn, frozen and barely conscious. He grabs Angelina's arm and warns her not to go through the Grand Deillet because his soldiers are waiting there.

He came all this way to warn them. Angelina is stunned and so is Cesar. All this time, Brawn was the one secretly feeding Guom information about the patrols. With the pass watched and the avalanche blocking the other route, there's only one way left. the glacier full of hidden cracks under the snow.

Belle and Sebastian (2013) Ending Explained

Sebastian says Belle can find a safe path. Higher up, a German patrol spots their tracks through binoculars and radios it in. Their officer says the group is only 4 hours ahead. He promises to catch them all like rats and the soldiers start climbing after them. A blizzard hits the glacier.

They can barely see their own hands. Belle goes first with her nose down in the snow, stopping every time the ground under it sounds hollow. Angelina follows her paw prints step by step. Then they hit a crack so wide the only way over is a thin bridge of snow. Belle crosses first, then the family one by one, trying not to look down.

Sebastian goes next. When Belle turns back for him, the bridge gives way under her paws. She drops over the edge, hanging by the rope. Everyone grabs it and pulls with all their strength until Belle scrambles back up. By the time the storm clears, they're standing on the other side in Switzerland.

Esther's family can't stop thanking them. A Swiss guide asks where Guom is, and Angelina says she came in his place. Sebastian tells Belle she's the bravest and most beautiful dog in the world. Angelina says he was very brave, too. Then Angelina tells Sebastian she isn't coming back with him.

She's going to London to help win the war. She promises to come home as soon as it's over, and she gives him a letter for Guom. Sebastian takes out his new compass watch, checks the direction, and starts the long walk home with Belle at his side. The Swiss guide asks if the little boy is really going alone.

Angelina smiles. He's not alone. A lonely boy, who was told the beast was a monster, saw what nobody else could see. A dog that had only ever been hurt by people. He saved her life. She saved his friends. And together they got a family to freedom. Do you think animals remember the people who were kind to them?