Herzog’s ‘Grizzly Man’ takes Nutcase to a Whole New Level

Cover of Grizzly Man

I’ve been wanting to watch Grizzly Man for years. FACT. So I finally got around to it last night, because I don’t procrastinate in minutes, I procrastinate in months. That’s just the way I roll. So around 48 ish (give or take 10 or more, or less, heck I don’t care) months later I decided; yeah, I’ll give it a whirl. My first thought when I saw Timothy Treadwell, the man who’s gone down as a legend as the mother ‘ucka who thought he was a bear but then unfortunately got eaten by one and took his long-suffering girlfriend Amie with him, looks a bit like a mixture between Chuck Norris and Woody Harrelson. The second thing I noticed is that Herzog began the movie with Treadwell talking about facing death everyday with the grizzlies. Yeah, that’s subtle foreboding right there in a NUTshell (geddit? Nut? Mad? Ha ha, such fun).

There’s no denying that this is a beautiful and interesting documentary. The man standing in front of the camera makes it so with his belief in his love for the bundles of brown fur and his methodical must-record-everything ways. But at the same time, he manages to make it uncomfortable, worrying and downright disturbing. This was a guy who clearly had issues with humanity and society, just civilization in general really. Confused and disheartened by the human world, it seems that Timothy Treadwell wanted to find a way to escape. Nature represented to him, his freedom. Unfortunately in that natural world he chose an unlikely companion: the grizzly bear. Maybe they symbolised to him, the misunderstood creature that he was, like a weird psychological transference of his own issues of not being loved and of not being protected onto a wild animal in a (supposedly) relatable position. Maybe he felt a connection with them that went deeper than any connection he’d felt with his own kind. Hmm. Touching, but mental.

Most people can guess how a story about a man who wants to live with the bears, nay, BE a bear, is going to end. Badly. And it does. Even more tragic is that the young girl with him, Amie, died too. The documentary falters somewhat in the rehearsed interview sections, a couple of tho people involved (particularly the physician and the ex-girlfriend) come across as if they themselves are one tortilla crisp short of a nachos bowl… But despite this annoyance, Grizzly Man never loses its momentum or becomes boring, Herzog’s editing momentum teamed with Timothy Treadwell‘s seemingly bi-polar personality sees to that. This is a must-watch.

One Ugly Duckling Hoping To See A Black Swan

I know, this is one trailer that’s been doing the circuit for a long time. Way too long. It’s almost as bad as when I was in America and I went to see Transformers. They showed the teaser trailer for Cloverfield at the beginning, and after getting all hyped up and excited about it, like a giddy school-girl does when she hears a boy fancies her, I was dumb-struck when I found out I had a year-long wait. They seem to be doing this more and more. I understand you need to get people interested in advance, but surely, a whole year is way, way too long. Way.

Anyway Black Swan is my new lust-after movie. I’m desperate to see it. I stumbled onto Dan Aronofsky a couple of years back. Skimming through my Sky channels, I noticed Requiem For A Dream had been on for just a couple of minutes. There and then I decided to tune in. About 2 hours later I sat, staring silently at the T.V. I had cried so much I was clutching an empty toilet paper roll. The film actually blew my mind apart. I spent the rest of the night trying to digest what I’d seen, and then I decided I would never watch it again. After that I developed a curiosity with the director and I proceeded to watch The Fountain. Another film that, whilst it didn’t have quite the same still-shock effect, was so interesting and beautiful I was mesmerized. Then of course The Wrestler, which I would say is probably his most mainstream film to date (anyone else noticed he’s going to be directed Wolverine 2?), but it was fantastic. What a great performance by Mickey Rourke eh? I’ve still got to watch Pi, but don’t you worry yourself over it, it’s on the list. Chillax.

But Black Swan is currently plaguing my mind; its feathers are tentatively tickling my film fancies. I’m hoping against hope to get last-minute tickets for the London Film Festival Gala Screening, but I don’t think many people will change their minds about going. It’s going to be huge. Nevertheless, I shall continue to click refresh on the BFI LFF homepage just in case. Yes you may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one… *thanks goes to John Lennon*

Here’s the trailer if you’ve been in space circling the planet for the last 4-6 months and haven’t managed to catch it yet. It’s going to be hella good.

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Will you be my friend? The Social Network review

Image by sitmonkeysupreme via Flickr

Today I went to see The Social Network, one of this week’s new releases. If you haven’t heard anything about this movie or seen the trailer at least, say, ten times, I’d be likely to believe you been sent off the earth in a rocket, with earplugs tightly squished in, and a blindfold across the eyes. Undoubtedly it is one of the biggest movies of 2010, one that certainly will be the talking point of a lot of awkward ‘I don’t know what to talk about so I’ll try movies’ conversation parties. After seeing it I am skeptical of exactly how close to the truth it really is. I believe that Mark Zuckerberg was (or is) probably a sociopathic genius. I believe he probably screwed over his contemporaries to get what he wanted. But I don’t believe much else. Only Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin are the ones who can attest to a lot of it. Plus the story leaves a lot unresolved; Who really betrayed who? Who was really jealous of who? And so on.

The first thing I was struck by, actually in the first scene, was the speed of the dialogue. It was like watching the West Wing on fast forward with the sound on loud (which isn’t that much of a surprise seeing as these were both written by Aaron Sorkin), and also I hear David Fincher was under contract to make the film around 2 hours long and therefore has confessed he made the actors run through pages of dialogue as quickly as possibly). The pace is constantly speedy; which is good for me, I hate when a film drags unnecessarily. I think Jesse Eisenberg played the character of Mark Zuckerberg with excellence, Andrew Garfield showed why he is one of our rising stars (go Team GB) and even Justin Timberlake gave a performance that didn’t make me hum Sexyback quietly to myself.

Overall I left the cinema with a sense of wonder (at the genius of the concept of Facebook, its meteoric rise to success, and the film’s portrayal of its beginnings) but also at the empty and sort of cruel irony. If what the film portrays is in any part true then the founder of Facebook, the social network of 500 million people and countless friends, is (or maybe was is a better word to use) a lonely person. A lonely person who is now the youngest billionaire in the world yes, but a lonely person none-the-less. This is certainly what David Fincher seems to be trying to get across in the movie and it’s executed smartly and beautifully within that 2 hour 19 minute time slot.

Thumbs up from me!

Related Articles

• The Social Network: Aaron Sorkin interview (telegraph.co.uk)
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The Eyes and Ears of the Holocaust

Cover of Shoah

Spending a week in Poland I decided to take a trip to Auschwitz. As a teenager and right through to University the history of the Holocaust has been of interest to me and so taking a trip to the biggest and most horrific concentration camp of them all seemed like a necessity. It was an emotional trip, one that I wasn’t sure how I would handle, after seeing so many films which show the camp as it was, it was interesting to note that it really hasn’t changed in almost 70 years. Movies like Schindler’s List and The Pianist serve to provoke and encourage an emotional response in the viewer, even when they have no knowledge of the true story behind it, and whilst this does serve to keep the memory of the atrocity alive, it may not always help people to understand what exactly happened.

Spurred on by my recent visit, this weekend I finished watching Shoah (1985). A 9 and a 1/2 hour documentary by Claude Lanzmann. A chain-smoking visionary who spent 6 years searching for eye-witness accounts of the Holocaust, refusing to include historical footage and instead preferring to focus on human accounts and how the camps look in the 80s. The documentary moves slowly, taking in everyone from survivors to ex-Nazi officials, and some of the most harrowing parts are unspoken. When the camera zooms in on the speaker’s face, it’s easier to see the horror living behind their eyes, even 3 decades after the tragic events took place. This documentary, or at least parts of it, should be shown for educational purposes around the world. Along with Come and See (Idi I Smotri) this is one of the best movies to get across the complete and utter incomprensibility of what happened during the most terrible genocide the world has ever seen.

 

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• John Farr: Never Again: Ten Great Holocaust Films You May Have Missed (huffingtonpost.com)
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