Has anybody seen this movie? It's only showing on one theater in Houston, but it sounds like it might be pretty good. Grizzly Man So last night I headed over to the Angelica theater and caught a sold out showing of Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog’s new documentary about the bear loving young activist Timothy Treadwell. This is a superb film. One of the best character profiles I’ve seen in a long, long time. Having spent 13 years living among Grizzly bears in Alaska, Treadwell was a minor celebrity. He made an appearance on David Letterman and was the subject of several articles in adventure travel magazines. People loved him and loathed him, but no one questioned his passion, a quality that shines through in this film. Using a DV camera, Treadwell filmed himself over the years living among the bears and assorted wildlife of the gorgeous and yawning Alaskan plain. He completed several hundred hours of tape, some of it extremely riveting footage. (He also shot numerous photographs). Much of the footage in the film has Treadwell talking to the camera, explaining why he is there. He constantly professes to be protecting the bears, but this is National Park Service land that is already heavily protected, with few real problems from poaching, and so one wonders if there is something else about his presence there, whether the whole adventure is more a matter of personal escape, of banishing demons and finding a purpose in life. Treadwell is a complex and fascinating character…a mixture of compassionate, animal-loving green, fervent nihilist and unbridled megalomaniac. He reminded me a bit of Chris McCandless, the character from Into the Wild. On the one hand, you can relate to his disdain for aspects of modern society, his passion for preserving wilderness…on the other hand he unquestionably goes off the deep end, and you really question his sanity. It’s no secret that in the end he is munched by a bear (along with his girlfriend), something captured on the audio portion of the tape found in his camera (the lens cap was on). You never get to actually hear this audio…but it is described in detail in the film. In once of the film’s scenes of perhaps treacly melodrama, Herzog listens to the tape as Treadwell’s former girlfriend looks on with a horrified, deeply pained face. I liked the scene, but it did seem a bit overwrought. Anyway, if you can catch this film, do so. Here is the trailer. Also, it seems that Leo DiCaprio may actually play Treadwell in a motion picture, although in this case it is hard to imagine the fiction film surpassing the documentary for elegance and drama. http://www.gadling.com/entry/1234000543054364/ http://www.grizzlyman.com/news.html
I saw it this weekend. ** pseudo-spoilers ? ** Werner Herzog is a unique director, and I am a fan. The film gives you some lots of footage from this odd Tim fellow. He's basically had his emotional development arrested at age 12 (or earlier). I'm not sure there can be spoilers for this film, but I put the warning up just in case. Werner is really a brutal examiner of the human spirit, and this film is no exception. He does spare you some potentially disturbing audio (from Tim Treadwell's demise, in which he left his video camera running with the lens cap on). My favorite parts of this movie involve the obvious dark sense of humor that Herzog lets himself show during some of the interviews (in terms of what he keeps during editing), and when Herzog jumps in with blunt voice-over. He can be very stereotypically German, which is immensely wonderful to me. (e.g. "Life is only full of chaos, of violence, ... of murder.") The subject matter drags just a bit, for me at least, in that the central character is such a dumbass at some basic level. But his guts and his dedication cannot be questioned. To live with these creatures, on their turf, going out into the Alaskan wilds for months at a time, unarmed, makes for a superlative act, and it makes for interesting viewing. In addition, you can tell that the director has some great sympathy for the drive and obsession of this character, perhaps even the misanthropy of this character. On a technical note, Herzog somehow gets the Treadwell footage to look exactly like his new interview footage; this is intentional and I think a non-trivial feat of production. Thumbs up. If you have not seen a Herzog film, may as well start here.
