Oh man, do I love this movie. I can’t gush enough. It’s probably one of the better documentaries that I have seen, besides the Weather Underground and American Movie. It’s maybe even more entertaining than American Movie just for the pure disbelief you feel towards Timothy Treadwell throughout the movie. He’s crazy! But let me start off telling you how I came about watching this movie.
So, my friend Sarah basically saw this movie in theater and could not stop talking about. It was “In Grizzly man this†and “Grizzly man thatâ€. I felt like I heard so much already and learned of the ridiculousness of Timothy Treadwell that I would be sufficiently prepared, but lo and behold I wasn’t. Treadwell lived out with the bears in Alaska for the summertime and had been doing this for well over a decade, until of course he and his girlfriend were eaten by one of them, but don’t worry, I’m not giving away the movie. You know, to achieve respect from bears, Treadwell was like a kind warrior. Kind so that the bears did not shy away from him, but a warrior, a samurai in fact, to show the bears that he was strong and that he wouldn’t get eaten. Of course he did get eaten. What cruel irony. I guess he wasn’t a strong warrior after all. But I digress, the footage that Treadwell has and his personality and even the interviews with his friend, family, coroner, and the haz-mat dude who cleaned up his mess all make the movie worth seeing.
Perhaps my favorite line is from the haz-mat guy who said, and I’m paraphrasing “Maybe the bears didn’t attack him for so long because they thought he was retarded or something. But then one day one of the bears thought he would be good to eat…†I laughed. Really hard. But you watch the documentary and you think, maybe he really is retarded the way he treats the bears. He isn’t even officially trained or even a man who had studied bears before, he’s just a normal (well, normal being some one who has no knowledge of the bear diet or what not) man who liked bears so much that he wanted to be one and yet he treats these bears as though the were kittens, speaking to them in a condescending tone when the get too close to the camera.
A lot of the scenes seem really rehearsed and fake, almost like a mocumentary. Werner Herzog made what the parents or his friend say seem insincere, although I’m sure they were very distraught about his death. There’s one scene where Werner asks Treadwell’s friend whether she felt like a widow. She laughs at first and then immediately says “yeah, you know, I kind of do.†We also see a shot with his parents standing outside of their house like the American Gothic painting, and it all looks very unnatural, the emotions don’t quite seem to get across. But Treadwell’s emotions certainly do in his own footage. He has such amazing mood swings. He’ll go from being very playful and soft-spoken to cussing out the park service (which he does for several minutes. Herzog interjects with his own comments so we can’t hear the full extent of Treadwell’s anger, but you get the general gist). Herzog’s intentions, for me at least, seem very ambiguous. I’m not sure if he made the documentary in homage to Treadwell, or whether he’s poking fun at him. The clips that he chooses seem to point to the latter and even some of the interviews he conducts, the one with the Inuit and another with a conservationist of bears, really demean Treadwell’s position. Basically, the conservationist at the park said that Treadwell’s actions are not saving the bears, but rather endangering them as they become accustomed to humans and begin to believe that all humans are friendly. The Inuit said that Treadwell crossed the boundary between bears and humans and that his actions are more disrespectful, in his culture, to the bears. Even when Treadwell says he’s trying to protect the bear, there is a scene where there are some poachers throwing rocks at bears, and Treadwell doesn’t even go out to help Sergeant Brown or whichever bear. But Herzog does respect his death. There was a sound recording of Treadwell and his girlfriend’s death, but we never hear it because, according to Herzog, it is too horrible. I feel that if he had played it for the audience to hear, it would have taken away from this almost fairy tale like character. It would have made the documentary too real. And in a way, this documentary is like a fairy tale the way that Herzog pieces together the footage and how he conveys Treadwell.
There are also some inconsistencies in the movie that I noticed. The major one being that Treadwell’s girlfriend. Herzog stated that she was only caught on film twice and both times we don’t see her face, but at the end, we clearly see Amy or whatever her name was in Treadwell’s footage. I feel like Treadwell deserved it, but the only tragedy is that his girlfriend had to do too. The movie is out on DVD (release, and there are some extra features like the end song that the pilot sings as well as bonus footage. But buy it or rent it. You can see Treadwell in all his glory and laugh at his antics, hear him yell out for rain, see him touch poop, this movie has everything. You’ll be shaking your head in disbelief while at the same time laughing. And this is one movie you’ll be talking to your friends about endlessly. It’s just one of those movies that you have to talk about. Well worth the money.
"Grizzly Man" opens August 12, 2005 and is rated R. Documentary. Written and directed by Werner Herzog. Starring Werner Herzog.
