bertseymour7

An interesting quasi documentary / feature film. Julie goes around studying nudism in Europe and then later in Florida. I just liked this film because it was quite unconventional and took a relatively objective look into social nudism.

Not much of a plot, and tends to meander a bit, but since its a pretty rare and authentic addressing of the subject matter I can't help but to forgive its few deficiencies and look at the interesting boldness of it all.

The copy I watched of this was rather oldish VHS style. I wish they would maybe do a remake or a sequel to further explore this interesting facet of society.

Most of us probably heard the little snippet of news that some guy got eaten by some bears in Alaska. I seem to remember that story, well what I didn't know was that his footage would be found, and then assembled by none other than madman Werner Herzog.

Herzog's blunt honesty in this documentary is quite surprising, he both respects Treadwell and finds him to be foolishly irrational. From a psychological perspective you have to wonder what exactly pushed Treadwell into his madness. He was a failed actor who somehow wanted attention and notoriety and got it by saying he was protecting the bears. Herzog shows that he was mostly doing harm by being around these bears and violating state park laws. Of course we can all understand this man's desire to wander out into the woods, everyone wants to just get out there sometimes.

The subject matter of this documentary is strange, and the character we focus on is not incredibly interesting, but Herzog puts on his best show, with his deep German accented narration and straight forward interviews. This would have been dull had anyone else done it.

A short little film, where Herzog eats his shoe, although in reality he just eats the leather part of his old shoe after boiling it in water. But still the principle of the whole thing is humorous, Herzog promised to do this if a filmmaker would actually just make the film they were always dreaming of making.

Errol Morris accomplishes this and so Herzog submits to it. Les Blank also did this documentary on Herzog "Burden of Dreams" so I think if I recall some footage of that is intertwined into this story.

Herzog should constantly have a camera on him, he strikes me as very interesting, I don't always love his films but he is always worth hearing from.