Grizzly Man Movie Review:


Timothy Treadwell was a quixotic, somewhat obsessed man, so it’s little wonder that a documentary about him would be directed by Werner Herzog, the great German filmmaker whose works include “Fitzcarraldo,” in which he
famously had an ocean liner pulled over a hill. Treadwell was obsessed with grizzly bears, and felt a closeness to them that he did not find in what he
called the ‘people world.’ He spent his summers with the bears of Alaska, acting, in his mind, as their friend and caretaker. A few years ago, one of
the bears he was trying to protect killed both him and his girlfriend.

Treadwell left behind over 100 hours of footage that he had shot of himself with the bears he loved so much. He has long monologues, discussing
the creatures, and how he has learned how to respect them and get them to respect him in return. Or so he thinks.

His story is explained early on, in the movie’s first ten or fifteen minutes, and then Herzog goes back and looks at Treadwell as an individual, cutting between interviews of those who knew him and Treadwell’s own footage. As his story unfolds, I found myself more and more fascinated by this man, who becomes simultaneously more sympathetic and more enigmatic the more we learn about him.

What emerges is a portrait of a troubled man, and a lonely one. The fact is – as his death shows – there was no real bond between the bears and
Treadwell; he saw in them an easier, happier life, and perhaps saw beauty in their lack of troubles. But though he needed the bears (he says he stopped his heavy drinking when he began spending time with them), the bears never needed him. He thought he was their protector, but what was he protecting them from? Poachers weren’t a serious problem in the area. As Herzog says, they look at Treadwell with only a ‘half-bored interest of food.’ It’s in their nature to kill other animals to eat them, and that’s what one ended up doing to Timothy Treadwell.

A lesser filmmaker might have sensationalised Treadwell’s story by playing up his troubled life, or by subtly mocking this eccentric nature-freak. But Herzog lets Treadwell’s footage speak largely for itself, occasionally butting in to offer his take on things, but never having anything less than respect for Treadwell and his friends.

Take, for instance, the recording of Treadwell’s death. Although he had time to turn the camera on before the bear killed him, he did not take the
lens cap off. At one point Herzog listens to the tape, which now belongs to a close friend of Treadwell, who has herself never listened to it. Herzog, wisely, does not allow us to hear it; we simply hear him relate what is on it, as the camera looks at the friend. After the tape is finished, he takes her hand in his, and tells her never to listen to it. It’s a surprisingly powerful moment.

Although I agree with Herzog’s views more than Treadwell’s, I found Treadwell a touching figure, especially in his more confessional speeches.
He seems to have had problems with women, and yet although his girlfriend is hardly shown, it seems clear that it was he who interested her, not the
bears, which she seemed afraid of. I was touched too by the sympathy Herzog has for Treadwell, not as a nature-lover, but as a filmmaker. He notes how
in one of Treadwell’s scenes, he gives his monologue to the camera, with bears in the background, and then the shot seems to have reached its logical conclusion, but then a fox runs into the shot, and looks at the camera. This is the ‘inexplicable magic of cinema,’ says Herzog. Cinema is rarely as powerful or insightful to me as when something is caught on a documentary
that is unplanned. Herzog is talking about Treadwell, but he is really giving clues to his own technique. There is a scene in the movie where
Treadwell’s friend is given the watch he was wearing when he died by the coroner. It’s still working. She takes it, puts it on, and then the characters pause, as if waiting for Herzog to say ‘cut.’ But the camera
keeps filming. The friend’s eyes fill up with tears. ‘It’s all that’s left of him,’ she says.

Moments like that are part of the reason Werner Herzog makes movies.

Adam Whyte

Herzog has an astonishing touch with documentaries, managing to inject his personal curiosity while letting his subject matter speak for itself. The result here is one of the most gripping and emotional films of the year.

Timothy Treadwell became something of a celebrity due to his obsession with living among Alaskan grizzlies every summer, protecting them from poachers, befriending them and filming them. And also fashioning himself as a sort of American Steve Irwin, fearless and knowledgeable. David Letterman jokes with him, "Am I going to one day read a story about you being eaten by one of these bears?" And sure enough, in 2003 he and girlfriend/assistant Amie Huguenard were killed by the bears they were studying.

Treadwell's own footage tells the story--stunningly intimate clips of him interacting with grizzlies and foxes, becoming one with them. He also talks to camera, and in outtakes displays both a showman and a bit of madness, raging about civilisation as the enemy to his idyllic view of nature. Edited with this is Herzog's own journey, visiting the Alaskan locations and talking to the people who knew him. Most notable are Treadwell's emotional ex Palovak and the friends and experts who discovered the bodies and figured out what happened.

The film is structured around the tragedy, and keeps cycling back to it from different angles as it digs into Treadwell's personality. The result is emotionally wrenching, often chilling, and infused with Treadwell's energy and humour. He clearly knows the risks, and that this was his place in life and death. And it gets even more compelling as we discover more about this man who so oddly combines bravado and childlike enthusiasm. When he opens up to his own camera, it's genuinely startling.

All of this footage is brilliantly compiled, balancing Treadwell's simple, sentimentalised view of nature with critics who thought he was doing the wrong thing. What emerges is a fascinating exploration of the collision between human nature and mother nature--how we long to see the earth as a warm, friendly place, when it's actually a fairly brutal food chain.

Rich Cline

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