Grizzly Man is a documentary about Timothy Treadwell, a failed actor and ex-drug addict who lived among Alaska's grizzly bear population every summer for over a decade. At the end of his thirteenth visit he and his girlfriend were killed and eaten by a rogue bear. Over the years Treadwell had shot hundreds of hours of video for a planned wildlife documentary. Much of this footage is extraordinary, on par with the best professional wild life videography. A significant fraction, however, is made up of Treadwell speaking directly to the camera. This footage shows a man descending into madness and obsession. Werner Herzog, famed German director and a fellow who knows something about obsessed madmen, edited together choice bits of Treadwell's footage, along with interviews of his friends and family, in an attempt to understand what drove Treadwell into the abyss. Herzog did not succeed.
Treadwell seems the most unlikely of naturalists. To look at him one wonders how he managed to survive ten minutes among the grizzly let alone thirteen years. While a self-taught expert on bear behavior he treated grizzlies not as the wild beasts they are but as (a ranger sourly notes) "people in bear costumes." Herzog flirts with the notion that Treadwell fantasizes friendship and love with the bears and nature as a replacement for normal human relationships. Over a close-up of one bear's impassive countenance, Herzog intones " what haunts me, is that in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature " It is, of course, precisely this lack of feedback that allowed Treadwell to build his fantasy relationships.
Treadwell was a good looking blond fellow but his ruggedness was severely undercut by a high pitched, infantile voice. He would seem more at home singing show tunes or baking brownies than roughing it in the Alaskan outback. This he did, however, and with conspicuous success until his growing insanity drove him to take fatal chances. In civilization he volunteered his time and knowledge to elementary and grade schools and set up a foundation to protect the Grizzly. Treadwell apparently financed his endeavors through Internet donations and a series of minimum wage jobs. He must have had emotional and entrepreneurial resources at total odds with what we see. All in all a fascinating character and one that doesn't interest Herzog in the least.
Herzog likes his madmen heroic and there is a certain way such men act. The problem for Herzog is that Treadwell was a fey, will-o-wisp of a man who didn't fit the heroic mold. The resulting conflict in tones often cuts close to comedy as when Herzog, responding to Treadwell's woozy romanticism, says "I believe the common character of the universe is not harmony, but hostility, chaos and murder." This is followed closely by an ecstatic Treadwell declaiming "Oh my gosh! The bear, Miss Chocolate, has left me her poop! The sad thing is that Treadwell doesn't need the trappings of a fictional tragic figure, he's the real deal. He genuinely faced down adversity, found triumph and fame and was savagely undone by fate and his own mad hubris. Sophocles couldn't have done better. Perhaps Herzog should have made a fictionalized biography where the living man could have been reduced to the sum of his tragedy. As a documentarian, however, Herzog's dramatic inclinations lead him astray. We, in turn, are left staring at Treadwell's anything but impassive face with less understanding than we had before we slipped the DVD into the drive.
Treadwell seems the most unlikely of naturalists. To look at him one wonders how he managed to survive ten minutes among the grizzly let alone thirteen years. While a self-taught expert on bear behavior he treated grizzlies not as the wild beasts they are but as (a ranger sourly notes) "people in bear costumes." Herzog flirts with the notion that Treadwell fantasizes friendship and love with the bears and nature as a replacement for normal human relationships. Over a close-up of one bear's impassive countenance, Herzog intones " what haunts me, is that in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature " It is, of course, precisely this lack of feedback that allowed Treadwell to build his fantasy relationships.
Treadwell was a good looking blond fellow but his ruggedness was severely undercut by a high pitched, infantile voice. He would seem more at home singing show tunes or baking brownies than roughing it in the Alaskan outback. This he did, however, and with conspicuous success until his growing insanity drove him to take fatal chances. In civilization he volunteered his time and knowledge to elementary and grade schools and set up a foundation to protect the Grizzly. Treadwell apparently financed his endeavors through Internet donations and a series of minimum wage jobs. He must have had emotional and entrepreneurial resources at total odds with what we see. All in all a fascinating character and one that doesn't interest Herzog in the least.
Herzog likes his madmen heroic and there is a certain way such men act. The problem for Herzog is that Treadwell was a fey, will-o-wisp of a man who didn't fit the heroic mold. The resulting conflict in tones often cuts close to comedy as when Herzog, responding to Treadwell's woozy romanticism, says "I believe the common character of the universe is not harmony, but hostility, chaos and murder." This is followed closely by an ecstatic Treadwell declaiming "Oh my gosh! The bear, Miss Chocolate, has left me her poop! The sad thing is that Treadwell doesn't need the trappings of a fictional tragic figure, he's the real deal. He genuinely faced down adversity, found triumph and fame and was savagely undone by fate and his own mad hubris. Sophocles couldn't have done better. Perhaps Herzog should have made a fictionalized biography where the living man could have been reduced to the sum of his tragedy. As a documentarian, however, Herzog's dramatic inclinations lead him astray. We, in turn, are left staring at Treadwell's anything but impassive face with less understanding than we had before we slipped the DVD into the drive.