Grizzly Man

Last night I watched a film by Werner Herzog called Grizzly Man. The film was released in 2005 and is about Timonthy Treadwell, a lover of grizzly bears who spent thirteen summmers in the Alaskan wildlife with the bears. Treadwell and his girl friend, who accompanied him on the final summer, were killed and eaten by a grizzly bear.

The film is primarily made up of footage that Treadwell, himself, shot over his stay in Alaska. Much of the audio he provides is insane, captivating, moronic and sad. At times he freaks out about the National Park Service or how much he loves the bears and is one of them. Other moments find him thinking aloud about his private life. All in all, the man spent the better part of thirteen years in the wild all alone and cannot be blamed for ranting and screaming about this or that. But something else besides lonliness was going on with this guy, as the film's talking heads put forth. Treadwell thought he was a bear, he was their friend and could not square the fact that he was human, not grizzly. Nor did he seem to recognize just how dangerous these animals were. Sure, when they got close he told them to go away, but he did not move himself and since a bear cannot understand a human, though he talked to them like they could, not too much distance was put between them.

Besides capturing on his camera the bears fighting, eating, playing, and most likely the bear that eventually ate he and his girlfriend, Treadwell spends much time with foxes, also crazy but cute. You get the feeling he was an honest lover of animals just not right in the head.

The one thing that you do not really want to see as a viewer, but cannot resist was thankfully not put in the film. The audio of the attack that ended the lives of these two people was captured by Treadwell but Herzog does not include it in the film, though there is a scene where you watch him as he listens to it. He does not look pleased and neither would we as the audience. This is a step in the right direction in a day and age when we want as much reality as we can handle. But as some know, not seeing or hearing something only makes it worse as it leaves it to the imagination. And that can be much more frightening than any reality. And it is here.

The only bonus feature on the DVD is strange in of itself. It features a documentary of the making of the film's score which was apparently recorded by musicians, including Richard Thompson and Jim O'Rourke, who did not know each other, nor had they ever written music together before.