Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a review of Werner Herzog's documentary GRIZZLY MAN that has been slowly growing positive buzz since it premiered at Sundance. The below review is in the "mixed-positive" camp and I think "King Kirby" has some valid points about his criticisms of the film. I'll have to see it for myself to see if I agree with him or not, though. Enjoy the look inside the life of wildlife wild man Timothy Treadwell as reviewed by "King Kirby!"
King Kirby here. Just saw a sneak of Grizzly Man, the new documentary from Werner Herzog (Aguirre, The Wrath of God; Fitzcarraldo), which is a fascinating study of how a man "goes native" among the brown grizzly bears of Alaska, which leads to his and his girlfriend's ultimate fates.
The footage is largely video shot by Timothy Treadwell, a man whose fascination of the bears leads him to a life of not only self-education, but also the teaching of schoolchildren about the animals. Timothy is an interesting case study because while his purpose appears to be for good (the preservation of the grizzly bears), the dude is just...well, hyper-annoying...yet strangely charming.
A former actor (who allegedly came in second to Woody Harrleson for the part on TV's Cheers! ), Treadwell speaks in a high pitched voice, sports a Prince Valiant hairdo and is a shameless self-promoter (we even see him in clips from an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman). His camerawork is, in some cases, an outstanding wildlife study (in one terrifying sequence two male bears fight over a female mere feet away from Treadwell's camera), and you can see that he quite fancies himself almost the Dian Fossey of the Grizzly set. The major difference is that Fossey was working to save the endangered Mountain Gorilla from poachers in the Congo, while we never quite get a full picture of what Treadwell was actually working to do. Indeed, "his" grizzly bears are on protected U.S. Government lands. Comments from others interviewed in the film even seem to point to Treadwell doing something pretty reckless out there by acclimating the bears and other wildlife to humans.
Instead of dancing around this for the rest of my review, let me just state now that Treadwell and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, are slaughtered and eaten by one of the grizzly bears. The footage from their last days appears to even show the beast that later killed them. The reason that I mention it has to do with what the director does with the footage of the pair being mauled. I say footage, but in fact the lens cap was never taken off the camera so all that remained were the horrifying sounds. Herzog (on-screen) sits and listens to it for us, and basically tells us that it is awful, no one should ever hear it again, and suggests Treadwell's ex-girlfriend (who owns the tape) destroy it. Aren't we adult enough as an audience to handle that? We do hear from a pilot who saw the killer bear gnawing on a human ribcage, and we learn that four trash bags worth of human remains were removed from the bear's stomach, but in and of itself, it lacks the full devastating impact that the audio could have created.
I guess what kept bugging me about Grizzly Man was, what the heck is German New Wave Cinema wunderkind Werner Herzog even doing putting this documentary together? Was he a friend of Treadwell? What's the story there? I don't know, and of the problems I have with the film, they are directly related to Herzog. Now certainly, the man knows a thing or two about obsession. I mean a.) the guy worked with Klaus Kinski, and b.) he literally moved a 300 ton boat across a mountain for Fitzcarraldo. But at certain points in the film, he oddly interjects himself into the piece like in the above-mentioned sequence where he listens to the audio and shelters us, the audience, from it. As narrator of the film, Herzog also makes this pontificating judgment about how 'Timothy saw things a certain way, but I think he was wrong. I think...blah, blah, blah.' Well, Werner, in a movie about Timothy Treadwell, who gives a shit what you think? It's quibbling to be sure, but I would have preferred to have more of Treadwell's footage as shot, in a more linear fashion. After all, knowing the story going in, you get a definite sense of dread at some of Timothy's comments and it seems that it would have been much more effective to just show us date stamps as we get closer to the attack.
Ultimately, I do recommend seeing Grizzly Man for the presentation of the unique personality of Timothy Treadwell, but I just wish there would have been a little less editorializing from Werner Herzog.
