Grizzly
Man is a film that could be looked at hundred different ways. And it will, no
doubt polarize (pun intended) those who believe in what Timothy Treadwell spent
the last ten years of his life doing, and those who consider him to be an utter
fool who would have eventually met with his grisly end, because his sanity had
been eroded by his withdrawal from, and hatred for the real world and the people
who inhabit it. Whatever one’s point of view regarding Treadwell, he was
no doubt an ideal subject for Werner Herzog and in certain undeniable ways an
uncanny substitute for Klaus Kinski.
No
matter what you think of Treadwell’s personal crusade of the mind, there’s
no getting around the fact that he was a nut. Funny, fascinating and in his own
bizarre way mostly likable - but a peculiar, egocentric goofball Treadwell was
without a doubt. The man was a living breathing documentary, complete with enough
filmed footage for three sequels. In a sense you really can’t hold this up
as any kind of masterwork on the part of Herzog (and pales in comparison to this
years crop of documentaries - particularly New York Doll and The March of the
Penguins) because all Herzog had to do was edit it. The documentary was 90 per
cent conceived and shot, before Herzog even started.
Perhaps
this was the best thing for the famed German film-maker, as he was fresh off Incident
At Loch Ness, which ranks very high on the list of the worst films ever made -
documentary or otherwise. After a debacle like that, Grizzly Man must have been
about as difficult an undertaking as slipping into a warm bath. Even so the film
has his stamp on it. With so much of it already finished, Herzog sort of approaches
the tragedy as a crime investigator, picking out footage of the most likely Grizzly
suspects and eliciting opinion from those close to Treadwell. He also has the
good sense to credit Treadwell for becoming a good filmmaker/documentarian in
his own right. His lack of fear, or just plain insane bravado allowed him to capture
yards and yards of spectacular footage, and some of the most interesting stuff
involved Treadwell’s own exposition. An obsessive perfectionist himself,
Treadwell would shoot numerous takes of his summations and observations - his
bizarre rants against poachers and government agencies which he imagines to be
such grave threats to his beloved bears.
The
film even reminds of The Blair Witch Project at times. There is one scene where
a storm has leveled his small tent and he films himself inside as he expounds
upon his courage and his foolishness as the wind howls and then something takes
a swipe at his tent and he falls silent - quite genuinely afraid. Again the thing
that makes Grizzly Man work is Treadwell’s bizarre personality. A fey and
skinny swish, with a blonde dutchboy, he speaks in a childishly high pitched voice
and talks to the various animals like a cross between Tiny Tim and Mister Rogers.
During one stretch he goes on about how his life would have been so much easier
if he’d been homosexual, but alas he’s a slave to the pussy, an unfortunate
circumstance that has brought him not only pain, but is partially responsible
for his decision to eschew civilization in favor of his hermitic, Waldenian existence.
There
are several fascinating ironies that the film presents, both awfully tragic. The
primary irony is that throughout his many years in the Alaskan wilderness he had
always gone it solo, but during the fateful year that his beloved bears would
prove to be his demise, he had brought along a lovely woman friend named Amie
Hueganard. Treadwell’s cameras recorded the audio portion of their mauling
deaths, but Herzog chooses to spare us - only showing himself listening to their
horrific final minutes. The other irony is that Treadwell had obviously shot all
of this footage with the intention of making a documentary not unlike Grizzly
Man and at one point even speaks of the fact that his work would be much more
valid and compelling if he happened to be killed by these animals whose welfare
he imagined to be his responsibility.
Just
as a few points of clarification, the title Grizzly Man is a bit misleading as
all the bears in the film are actually brown bears, most of which were well-protected
by the National Park Service. This isn’t really a film that should be critiqued
- it is what it is, much of it fascinating, primarily because of the Grizzly Man
himself. Quite a piece of work, Timothy Treadwell.
