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.
Left Me Reeling 