Grizzly Man

Grizzly Man is German Master Werner Herzog's documentary on the life and death of Timothy Treadwell, a reformed drunk who lived for months at a time in the Alaskan wilderness amongst grizzly bears. Watching this stirring film, surely one of the most beautiful, fascinating and thought-provoking of 2005, is really like watching two amazing films at once.

On one level, you're watching Herzog - a veteran documentarian who has chronicled, over the years, subjects as diverse as childhood autism to desert mirages to the flaming oil fields of Iraq - trying to make sense of a messy, illogical life. Treadwill loved bears, almost to the point of trying to become a bear, before he and his girlfriend were tragically attacked and devoured by a particularly nasty ursine specimen. Herzog, always fascinated by defiant, stubborn and unwinnable crusades, has many fascinating insights into Treadwell's psyche and situation, but leaves the film open-ended and ambiguous enough to allow an audience to draw their on conclusions.

But on an entirely separate level, Grizzly Man works as the culmination of Timothy Treadwell's own artistic ambitions. Bringing along a video camera with him on his expeditions, and filming over 100 hours of grizzly bears, foxes, the Alaskan environment and himself, Treadwell obviously dreamed of reaching a worldwide audience with his message of protecting the environment. Most of Herzog's film is composed of Treadwell's amazing nature and diary-like personal footage (his death occurs, mercifully, off-screen), and the images and scenes captured are astounding in their simplicity and beauty.



A few questions permeate the entire film. What could have driven Treadwell, a peculiar but certainly not insane individual, to remove himself completely from civilization for up to four months at a time? And to put himself so directly in harm's way, living amongst wild animals he knows to be extremely unpredictable and dangerous? Considering his extremely limited experience with other humans in the wild, whence his intense paranoia about poachers and his hatred of the U.S. Park Service? How did he convince his girlfriend to join him on these excursions, despite her professed fear of wild bears? And why, despite her presence on several expeditions, did he pretend in his films to live by himself in the wild?

Though he provides potential solutions to these and other mysteries about Treadwell, and speculates at length as to the nature of Treadwell's demons and personal hang-ups, Herzog never once goes for easy answers.

There is surprisngly divergent opinion about Timothy up in Alaska. Several native Alaskans indicate that he was clearly in violation of local customs, including a helicopter pilot who helped retrieve Timothy's remains and claims that "he got what was coming to him." A descendant of the indiginous Alaskans to the region takes a quasi-spiritual umbrage to Timothy's mission, claiming that his attempts to bond with bears violates thousands of years of tradition. Ecologists chime in to note that Timothy's work actually may have done more harm than good - rather than protecting bears from invisible threats like poachers, what he actually did was make bears more accustomed to living amongst humans, which could provoke an increase in bear attacks.

But others remember him fondly, as a tireless crusader on behalf of the grizzly bear and environmental issues. He would speak for free at schools about his experience, and loved educating young people about the natural world. He started a non-profit group to help protect grizzly bears all around the world. Those who knew him seem to have no doubt that his love for animals was sincere, genuine and selfless. And even Herzog (who narrates the film himself) compliments Treadwell's filmmaking abilities, noting how he managed to capture inspired, unique and totally improvisational nature footage.

And yet...there is genuinely something off about the man we see revealed in Timothy's footage. Herzog, through careful editing and combing through the many hours of footage, has created a complex portrait of a very eccentric, self-aggrandizing and occasionally delusional loner. Timothy never reveals the specific reason for rejecting society and "the human world," but it's clear that he feels a deep-seated sense of alienation. (In fact, at the time of his death in October, he normally wouldn't have still been in the wild at all. He had been driven back into the woods after a heated argument with an overweight airline employee.)

Though his film is meant to showcase bears in their natural habitat, he's unable to keep himself from becoming the center of attention. Despite the fact that he sometimes did have a companion with him to off-set the loneliness and isolation of his surroundings, Tim tends to treat the animals and the camera as friends, speaking aloud to them and using them as confessors. At various intervals in the film, we hear Timothy discuss his intense anger at those who don't respect the environment, his sadness over being unable to maintain a healthy romantic relationship, his problems with crime and drugs, and even his questioning of his own sexuality. Then there's his tendency to cast himself as a romantic hero, the savior of the wilderness from an unseen enemy at great risk to his personal safety and security.

Many commentators during the film note that Timothy seemed to desire an actual physical transformation...that he wanted to actually become a bear. We hear an excerpt from his diary in which he claims to "mutate into a wild animal" when he's living with the bears, and an ecologist claims Timothy would behave in a bear-like fashion when confronted by other humans in the wild. But we don't ever see this sort of behavior in the film. Instead, in the footage of Grizzly Man, Treadwell seems to have such an intense fascination with the bears that he wants to disappear completely into their world. Not so much the act of becoming a bear, but the act of blending into their community so seamlessly, of knowing the animals so intimately, that he could remain there forever, unseen, undetected, just watching and loving the animals invisibly.

In one scene, Treadwell sees a bear defecating, and then runs up to actually feel the "poop" with his fingers. Afterwards, he comments (still giddy from the experience) that he wanted to touch the poop because it had been inside the bear...because it was a part of the bear that was accessible to him. Yes, there's a creepy sexual element to it, but to me, it's simply the action of a profoundly unhappy individual who could not find any satisfaction in the civilized world. There's something that wants to give up on life completely, to blend into this world that, though beautiful and at times serene, was equal parts desolate and dangerous.

"I don't believe there is a Secret World of Bears," Herzog says at the end, denying that Treadwell's fantasy of a utopian natural world even exists in the harsh wilds of Alaska. If not, then what did Timothy Treadwell find up there in Alaska? Why did he remain there for so long, even when his girlfriend wanted to leave and his money ran out and hate mail poured in from environmentalist-hating conservatives every day? Grizzly Man gives us some clues, but it can't provide us with the entire story.

Grizzly Man arrives on DVD this coming Tuesday. I can't recommend this as a film experience enough. A tremendous, challenging artistic achievement from one of the world's greatest living filmmakers.