Review - Grizzly Man Documentary
Werner Herzog's Look at the Life of an Overzealous Bear Enthusiast
Nov 9, 2009
While waiting for the November 20 release of the biggest stateside release of Werner Herzog’s career (the Nicolas Cage crime drama Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans), it is worth taking a look back at one of the director’s more interesting films, Grizzly Man. The 2005 documentary is a poignant look at the shortened life of wildlife enthusiast Timothy Treadwell, who spent thirteen summers literally living among grizzly bears in the Alaskan wild.
Comprised mainly of footage shot by Treadwell himself with his own video camera, the film chronicles the last days of a man who grew increasingly frustrated with the human world and longed to disappear into the wilderness that his true friends called home. Believing that it was his duty to protect his grizzly friends, Treadwell traveled by plane to a remote part of Alaska each year to set up camp and essentially babysit the bears until their winter hibernation.
The Grizzly Man’s Amateur Footage
The unedited footage finds Treadwell spewing anti-governmental diatribes, proclaiming himself the only person on the planet worthy of protecting the animals. He calls them by names that he had given them and treats them like pets, or like the stuffed teddy bear that he sleeps with every night. Should it come as a surprise that one of the bears attacked and killed him late in the summer of 2003?
Some of those interviewed for Grizzly Man say Treadwell got what he deserved. Others say he might have gotten what he wanted. Herzog, however, is more content letting the footage speak for itself than in sentimentalizing the death of the man who lived among beasts.
As a film director, Herzog is interested in the beauty that Treadwell captured with his camera – lone bears wandering along riverbanks; a fox pawing the canvas of a tent from its perch outside; shrubs swaying gently in the breeze. Like his subject, Herzog appreciates the splendor of this Alaskan wilderness and all of its film-like qualities.
Subject of Documentary Not Model Human
After watching Grizzly Man, one may start to think that the ability to get the perfect shot was Treadwell’s only redeeming quality. Here is a man who is seemingly delusional, often acts like a forty-year old child, and may be doing more harm than good in his quest to protect the bears he loves so much. His speeches delivered to the camera are never brilliant, never philosophical – more often they are laced with swear words as he gets excited about a lasting drought or a baby fox that has been killed in the night.
The only poetical words in the film come from Herzog, who narrates; but he doesn’t seem too concerned with making the audience sympathize with his subject. Instead, this documentary shows a man with good intentions who, while missed by the few close friends he had in life, had little impact elsewhere in the world.
