Grizzly Man

The love-it or hate-it responses of the Amazon viewership to Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man illustrate quite nicely the theory that art exists not wholly formed on the page, canvas or celluloid, but somewhere between the viewer and the "text". If you come to this film expecting a beautifully shot wild-life documentary and hoping for a picturesque education about bears and the Alaskan wilderness, you'll be sorely disappointed. The wildlife footage - some quite remarkable, notwithstanding - was shot by a paranoid loner on a handycam. You'll also have no-one to blame but yourself, since nothing about the film, even down to its name, let alone its maker, is suggestive for a moment that that's what it's about.

If, on the other hand, you come armed with some background knowledge about German director Werner Herzog and what he's about - not ordinarily a documentary maker as such, although some of his feature films have an almost documentary quality to them as studies in human obsession (not least his own) - your expectations will be quite different, and I dare say your reaction to Grizzly Man will be too.

Over forty years Herzog has obsessionally directed obsessional actors (Bruno S, Klaus Kinski) depicting obsessional/delusional figures (Kinski as a psychopathic conquistador Aguirre searching for El Dorado, a barmy opera nut Fitzcarraldo with a dream of bringing high art to the deepest recesses of the Amazon rainforest, and as the good Count in Nosferatu: The Vampyre; Bruno S as Kaspar Hauser, a man trapped from birth for 20 years in a windowless dungeon in rural Germany, or in Stroszek as a man resemblent of himself vainly trying to escape his condemning past by going to America), in obsessional ways (Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo both filmed on location; in Aguirre Herzog allegedly held Kinski at gunpoint to prevent him walking out; in Fitzcarraldo when the script called for a paddle steamer being pushed by hand over the crest from one valley to the next, Herzog required his cast to actually carry out the operation).

Seen in this context, Timothy Treadwell represents almost found-object sculpture for Herzog: you couldn't make this up, and for much of the documentary, Herzog is arranger, art director and chief contextualiser; providing background interview material only to back up his own view of the world, which he openly concedes is quite contrary to Treadwell's (such as it was a coherent world-view). So to complain that Herzog is distorting; contorting; contriving an outcome is also (to my mind) to miss the point. Yes, he is, just as Marcel Duchamp was contorting the true purpose of a urinal by inverting it, signing it, and entering it in an art exhibition. That's what artists do.

While it may be selectively edited, it is difficult, all the same, to conceive that what Herzog left out might negative the impression that Treadwell was an ignorant, paranoid, delusional burn-out, and that his most impressive achievement was not being eaten earlier.

Contrary to some reviews here Herzog is not by any means completely unsympathetic to Treadwell, but he sees him not as a naturalist but a natural film-maker. Some of the footage - when Treadwell can keep his sorry face out of it - is quite extraordinary, and reminiscent of some of the German director's own impressionist output, as Herzog remarks. As he was director, cameraman and star, Treadwell often had no alternative but to leave the camera running, and Herzog draws our attention to it - the random play of rushes in blustery wind reminiscent of the opening scene from The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, which reflects on a ripe stand of barley in much the same way. And the final shot of the film, wherein we see Treadwell hiking away from the camera towards the perils of nature - bears, mountains, brewing inclement weather - is not unreminiscent of Bruno Ganz's departure into the Transylvanian mountains to confront the count in Nosferatu.

There are some aspects of the film I found less persuasive, and in particular Herzog's melodramatic decision to film himself listening, on earphones, to an audio-tape of Treadwell's actual death, then commending its possessor, a former girlfriend of Treadwell, to destroy it without listening. Herzog has managed to find a consistently weird cast of hangers on, ex lovers and Treadwell fans - and the oddest coroner I've ever seen - to backfill Treadwell's story - and while this does lend proceedings the unfortunate air of a Christopher Guest mockumentary, I expect it is no more than anyone would find if one poked around in remote Alaska long enough.

I loved this film. If you did, I would heartily recommend a look at Herzog's classic seventies output in particular featuring Klaus Kinski, which is anthologised in a pretty economical single edition: Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski: A Film Legacy

Olly Buxton

If you search various internet search engines using "grizzly man hoax", you will find a number of discussion boards where people are intelligently and actively questioning the validity of this story, because so much of the information available to us today is completely suspect, and because the movie views like a mockumentary. I thought this was a hoax when I saw it at the theater, before reading or researching anything about the film or its subject matter. The only other Herzog movie I'd seen at that time was the Loch Ness mockumentary, which was not really that well done. So, I figured, he just got it (a seemingly "airtight" hoax) right this time. I experience huge amounts of cognitive dissonance from the 'information' people give me based solely upon media reports, on a daily basis, so I am not convinced that the information reported anywhere about Timothy Treadwell is valid. After seeing more of Herzog's work, I do believe that he is entirely capable of staging such a hoax, including setting the main character up as a would be nature cinematographer/enthusiast well in advance of the production of the documentary. It wouldn't be impossible for anyone to do, especially Herzog, with years of experience, an iron will, and a demonstrated love of both the absurd and social commentary. We, the public are known to be relatively easily manipulated, as the majority of us take for granted that anything even marginally well stated is believable. I think that could be the real point of the film. Based upon Herzog's other work, I believe that he is mainly a performance artist, and that he just happens to use film as his medium. I believe that this is performance art - the whole thing: the set up, the delivery, and ultimately, the revelation and understanding that it's a hoax designed to measure the public's level of gullibility, which we already know is huge (weapons of mass destruction, anyone?). If you don't believe Herzog capable of such a hoax, just do what I did, and watch a bunch of his movies, including the "Loch Ness Incident", "My Best Fiend"(sic), "Fitzcarraldo", etc., as well as reading discussion boards and reviews that discuss the "hoax" aspect of this film, and if you don't think a man who took a crazed Klaus Kinski into the Amazon jungle for three years and pulled a massive steamship over a mountain and dumped it into deadly rapids using only the manpower of a bunch of Amazonian locals just to put the whole thing on film and maybe make some statements about obsession, greed, imperialism, etc., isn't capable of pulling off a mockumentary of this scale, then I don't know what to tell you. In any case, I've never seen a documentary about one man's angst and tortured existence with so many (or, any, for that matter) hilarious scenes that made the theater audience laugh out loud over and over again, ever before in my life, and I just can't answer the question of why that is without coming to the conclusion "because it's a comedy". If Treadwell did really exist and die in this manner, then the other questions that I and others are asking about the film's veracity and/or intent still remain unanswered. Don't forget that a well respected doctor perpetrated the famous "Loch Ness" photograph hoax and that he waited a long, long time before admitting to the hoax. That guy wasn't even an avant garde filmmaker, just a well educated guy with an idea and a camera who wanted to have some fun and do a little experiment about what people are willing to believe based upon scant evidence.

Timothy Treadwell spent 13 summers protecting grizzly bears at perilously close range in a remote Alaskan peninsula - and then they killed him. His 'honest' straight-to-camera commentary depicted a man at odds with himself and what he called the human world; however, the irony that Treadwell died at the paws of those he was trying to 'protect' was not lost on the local National Park inhabitants, who felt that Treadwell was only dicing with death in getting so close to the grizzlies. Treadwell was obviously in love with himself more than his hairy friends; at times he worries more about his receding hair line than the bears themselves, and he feels no embarrassment in boasting that "I am a kind warrior" Director Herzog edits footage of Treadwell's documentaries with his own interviews to piece together a character of a man who tried all his life to be someone else. Treadwell travelled around schools showing his footage to school children while never once soliciting a fee - and his skills as a documentary maker, as Treadwell's footage boasts coverage that studio directors with union crews wouldn't have got. Grizzly Man is a captivating and intriguing documentary, and a thought-provoking insight to one man's struggle - the shame is that the real struggle is with reality.

I can understand why Timothy Treadwell's story would appeal to any filmmaker. It has the right ingredients: a larger-than-life subject with personal demons and a mysterious off-screen death, deep in the wilderness. This should have been a slam dunk, Lawrence Of Arabia meets Gorillas In The Mist. Unfortunately, in sorting through hours and hours of Treadwell's footage, Werner Herzog struggles to say anything new or important.

Yes, this is more about Treadwell himself than the bears he studied, and no, it is not a nature documentary. But the story of a man feeling ill at ease in human circles, moving to the wilderness and slowly losing the plot is neither new nor compelling. Anyone alone in such a setting would start to exhibit irrational or even animalistic behavior. Herzog sensationalizes Treadwell as being "hell-bent on destruction", and his girfriend Amy Huguenard becomes a mythical figure simply because she is only visible in a few shots.

A far more valuable message to take away from this film, one largely ignored by Herzog, is that it is a mistake to ascribe human characteristics and identities to dangerous creatures we know nothing about. We do so at their peril as much as our own. Thirteen summers spent in the company of bears did not make Treadwell a qualified bear expert. He treated bears like people because he was lonely, possibly crazy, definitely wrong. He saw himself as an observer, and the bears saw him as an intrusion. Poking and prodding bear cubs from behind a camera made them more susceptible to poaching than anyone throwing rocks.

So the message illuminated by Herzog in the Treadwell footage, that we sometimes go a little crazy in solitude, is hardly groundbreaking documentary material. Then there are the interviews. Herzog talks to an assortment of people who knew (or, in the case of a bizarre coroner, seemed to think they knew) Treadwell best. It is unclear if these interviews were scripted, or done over multiple takes, or what. Maybe this is a Herzog thing, but they come off looking like a strange, surreal bunch of attention-starved people, performing for the camera.

It's easy to sneer, I admit. Here's this fast-talking, ditsy Hollywood wannabee, capering around in the wilds of Alaska, foolishly risking his life out of a misplaced sense of kinship with dangerous wild animals. A Darwin Award winner, you might think, and on one level you'd be right.

But the sad thing is that there is really no place in our society for people like Timothy Treadwell to go, anymore. And it shows. Henry David Thoreau and John Muir may well have been reduced to spewing profanities at the U.S. Park Service, had they lived in the present. Sure, Treadwell got lost in over-identifying with the bears, with his cute names for them and everthing. Pure cathexis, concentrating emotional attachment onto a single, probably inappropriate object.

But he also achieved a cracklingly intense union with nature. Going ga-ga over bear scat, or a dead bee on a blossom, he truly saw "the world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower". However maladroit he may have been in human society, Treadwell nevertheless experienced nature with a joy and savor and depth that many a more conventional environmentalist could envy.

Of course he was never in a position to protect the bears. Indeed, being killed by one was a sure death sentence for the unfortunate mankiller--bears with a taste for human flesh could not be allowed to remain at large. In that respect Treadwell was unforgivably selfish. He should have known what would follow the event of his own death.

Director Werner Herzog mentions his own run-in with madness in the wilderness, alluding to the famous incident when he threatened to shoot Klaus Kinski during the filming of Aguirre, The Wrath Of God. He admires many of Treadwell's shots, for effects both intended and unintended, and see-saws between treating him as a crazy romantic, and a fellow cinematic artist.

The best thing about the film? The excellent folk-electric soundtrack by Richard Thompson is close to it. The rustic stylings of the ex-Fairport Convention guitarist suit the gorgeous natural setting to a T. The DVD has a nifty in-the-studio featurette with him, in the extras.

Animals can't tell you to buzz off and mind your own business, in so many words, which is why nature worship is so popular among busybodies nowadays. We are not all brothers under the fur. Some of nature's children are just plain old, unemployed, probably agnostic, wild beasts, into whom the lonelier of us project ourselves. On that account, Treadwell wasn't much different from the batty old maid with an apartment full of cats. But, for the transports of ecstasy he experienced in bear country, and filmed, and shared with thousands, he is someone whose memory will be long treasured. The gifted, sensitive filmmaker will be remembered, not the suicidal fool.