Grizzly Man

Upon coming out of Grizzly Man, with my friend, I couldn't help noticing my own face in the reflection of the lobby mirrors... my face was completely blank. I looked over at my friend, and noticed she was merely staring down at her shoes and scratching her nose. Exiting out onto the street, joining the rest of the crowd as we all search for our cars, I couldn't help but believe I was still staring into the lobby mirrors... nearly every head was shaking, and every expression blank.

I now believe I will never know how I feel about Timothy Treadwell. A boy who accidentally grew into a man.

Grizzly Man immediately opens with the facts surrounding Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard's death. These facts will stay inside you as you grow acquainted with Timothy and the animals surrounding his demise. Sadly, Amie Huguenard remains a faceless mystery.

Werner Herzog's soul remains intact, as he gently disassembles the matter of Timothy Treadwell's. Failed actor? Inveterate liar? Misguided Mercenary? Was Timothy Treadwell merely playing out the part of some great Discovery Channel episode in his head? We watch and listen as a lonely Timothy walks and talks into his only companion, a MiniDV camera, about his female problems, drug problems, memories and most importantly his love of animals.

Bears and Foxes in particular. There is one thing you could never doubt about this man, and that is of his love for Bears. "I love you, I love you..." We constantly hear him saying to the Bear's and Foxes that had become his "friends" over the years. And through Herzog's direction it is impossible to miss the beauty in this.

Timothy Treadwell's photography in this film is absolutely extraordinary. And Mr. Herzog did an extraordinary job putting it all together. In my opinion, this is his best film since Little Dieter Needs To Fly. (Un) fortunately, I cannot stop thinking about it. I cannot stop wondering who this man was... He wrapped himself in bandana's, claimed to be a "Peaceful Warrior", there to protect the Bears. But from what? The arguments were made that acquainting himself with them, he was doing much more harm then good. Why should they get to know a human? How could this help them in the future? And we know how it ended for him...

How can you just sit there and watch one mans whole life be wrapped up in a two hour film? And then declare his work meaningless? You can't. Was he just a suicidal man, playing one big act? Was he truly some feral warrior, bringing awareness and the importance of Bear protection and safety to light? Was he a directionless maniac who ultimately got an innocent girl killed?

The duality of Timothy Treadwell is merely one more example of the duality of mankind. And the mirror in which I had been looking into had, in fact, been the movie screen itself. Unfortunately, it appears as though he believed the Bears surrounding him shared this depth. And who am I to tell you they don't?

Herzog's "Grizzly Man" is a miraculous documentary. He started by collecting hundreds of hours of video tape shot by the movie's subject, Timothy Treadwell. The director then culls through the footage and assembles a fascinating portrait of this uniquely bold (and clearly troubled) human being: Treadwell spent 13 summers living amongst grizzly bears in the wilds of Alaska, before being killed by one in the summer of 2003.

Treadwell's footage is gorgeous, and at times heart-stopping: a grizzly battle caught on tape is the stuff Animal Planet would kill for. But the footage goes beyond simply revealing the harsh yet beautiful reality of the Alaskan wilderness. The camera soon becomes a silent confidant to Treadwell's self-obsessed confessions. For one, he sees himself as the singular savior of the wildlife preserve he camps at and the creatures that reside there. But he also sees himself becoming increasingly less connected to the real world he lives in 9 months out of the year. The footage here is most poignant, revealing Treadwell's inner struggles. It paints a picture of a lonely man searching, perhaps desperately, for purpose in a world he feels has rejected him. Most eerily prescient are Treadwell's repeated remarks about how he would die for the bears, though his eventual death does not appear to be the martyrdom he so clearly sought.

This is where the film is most riveting - in Treadwell's footage, focused on the man, the bears, and the force of nature around them. Less compelling are Herzog's talking head interviews with Treadwell's friends and family - although they do help to solve (as much as possible) the puzzle of where Timothy came from, what lead him to the bears, and why he was killed.

It would not be a Herzog film with the director's own philosophical palette framing the story. Herzog's commentary reveals his longstanding view that nature is cruel and that chaos is the constant in our life experience, not harmony. That Treadwell saw beauty and soul in the bears seems to be beside the point, since ultimately their need for sustenance made them turn on their self-appointed protector.

Anyone who has followed the trajectory of Werner Herzog from the time of "Even Dwarfs Started Small" will understand the immediate appeal that the Treadwell story must have had for this intensely brilliant German director. Treadwell must have seemed to Herzog like a Laguna Beach version of his Fitzcarraldo and his Aguirre and even of Herzog himself in his more unhinged moments. This film appears at first to be a fair minded documentary about Tim Treadwell, the 'protector' of all things natural and wild in the remote regions of Alaska. What Herzog shows us, however, is that what Treadwell really needed protection from was reality itself and that his escape into the wilds was just a deadly game of denial.

The film is also a meditation on the brute force of nature, on art and on human hubris. My wife found the 'character' of Tim Treadwell so ludicrous and offensive that she had to leave the theater. For my part, I was in awe of both Treadwell's incredible physical courage coupled with his absolute lack of judgment and his insane narcissism. He struck me as a cross between Pee-Wee Herman and Marlon Perkins, the guy who narrated the Mutual of Omaha nature documentaries that showed up on Sunday afternoons in the 60's and 70's.

The word is that Hollywood, in the person of Leonardo DiCaprio, was a financial supporter of Treadwell's 'mission'in Alaska and that a Hollywood version of the story is due out sometime soon with Di Caprio playing the lead. I know I won't be going to see that version because it will just continue the lie and the myth that Treadwell tried so hard to create and sustain. Even at his most intense moments of profoundity Treadwell had nothing to 'say' to anyone about either bears or himself. It was all self-serving and self-congratulatory and it is only in his grotesque death at the hands of a rogue grizzly that any meaningful message finally comes across. (Herzog thankfully spares us from the actual experience which was caught on audio but not on video because the lens cap had been left on.)

Its hard not to feel sorry for Tim Treadwell and the young woman who died with him, but the 'native' scientist in the film put it quite nicely "My people have been living nicely with bears for thousands of years and we know enough to stay out of each other's way."

Tim Treadwell wanted desperately to cross the boundary into the 'way' of the bear because the 'way of the human' was too much for him. Despite his goofy, childish demeanor he revealed himself to be a man of deep anger and resentment. However, if the bears had let him live he would probably be considered something of a folk-hero in 'reality' obsessed America.

Herzog shows us that there was nothing real about Treadwell at all and that the bears knew a lot more about him than he ever would of them.

This film proves what little we already know about wildlife: 99% of the time, it will leave you alone as long as you don't harass it, but the 1% is a differential that ends with you screaming and some guy finding your arm later.

It also proves that we know even less about human nature than we do about bears, as Tim Treadwell is a mystery even to his own species.

It's obvious that he has some kind of disorder or drug-related brain damage, what with his extreme lability of mood, delusions of identity, neurotic and repetitive speech patterns, and general paranoia about the activities of his fellow humans. He knows a lot of interesting people, from his geeky friends who state the mundane as though it is profound ("I don't think he had a death wish at all." "I don't think anyone really deserves to be eaten alive by a bear."), to the Friend/Actor who is not even believable when portraying himself, to his very ordinary parents who are just as confused by him as we are.

In this film, we learn that Treadwell switches addictions from alcohol to bears, and descends into functional madness while attempting to integrate himself into their "secret, inner world." He is paradoxical throughout, both disliking humans and yearning for a love relationship, being fully aware of the dangers that the bears pose, but doing nothing to protect himself from them. (Well, he is fatalistic in his devotion to them, but seems to think that they will not harm him as long as he behaves properly around them. That an older, aggressive bear could become hunger-crazed enough to attack him indiscriminately seems beyond his scope.) At times he shows a thorough understanding of animal behavior and the natural world, at other times a grand ignorance of the reality of life in the wilderness. He seems forever stymied trying to enforce human concepts like justice and righteousness upon the jungle. His sentimentality with the bears and perceived relationships there show in stark relief when the animals display constant indifference or even aggression, and when it is clear that some near-altercation with them has occurred off-camera.

In the end, he is really no more successful with bears than he is with people, understanding the basic rules but never seeing the whole picture in clarity enough to know how to avoid crashing and burning.

Perhaps most indicative of his dysfunction is how he responds to the fond relationship he develops with the foxes, who actively play with him and seek his company and interaction. While he loves them, they are but a footnote on his path to destruction; he prefers the ambiguous and imagined affection from the dangerous bears, to the foxes' genuine displays of it.

"Grizzly Man" is not about a man at all; it is a sad, true story about a wayward being without a species.

On this journey, the audience meets a lot of bears that look alike but who we know were distinct to Treadwell, a creepy coroner who is probably not acting, and a slew of observers who all have their own biased and often badly distorted views of "what really happened." In the creamy middle is the quirky pilot who knew Treadwell best, and the director himself, the voice of reason in this well-crafted work.

The moral: Van Halen was right. "It's business as usual in the woods." Animals make sense; it's people that don't.

I have so far resisted peer pressure to watch more than the first episodes of Tiger King, but I can still say with confidence that Grizzly Man is vastly superior.

It's truly incredible the amount of empathy Herzog is able to generate for such a misguided, kooky person. It's all the more impressive to see the contrast between Timothy Treadwell's sentimentalized view of nature with Herzog's (and my, for that matter) view that nature is indifferent and chaotic. To mix these two contrasting philosophies with what are, in some sense, two different films--Treadwell's footage and Herzog's narration and interviews--make for something truly moving and insightful.