Grizzly Man

I've just been to the GFT to see Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog's documentary about Timothy Treadwell. Treadwell lived and died with grizzly bears out in Alaska. I'm not giving anything way by saying that he and his girlfriend were killed and eaten by bears as the film is centered around this.

Treadwell shot more than 100 hours of footage while living with the bears. Some of the footage is absolutely fascinating. He gets up close with the bears repeatedly and there is one extended sequence of two bears fighting that is riveting.

However no matter how close he gets to the bears and how much he says knows and is friends with them, there's never a sense that he has a true understanding of the creatures. I didn't at any point feel I was listening to an expert on the animals, as you would were you watching a David Attenborough programme for example.

Instead Treadwell comes over as a children's television presenter naming the bears and joking about Mr. Chocolate the bear as if we're watching him interact with a puppet. He later appears more like a sports commentator as he reviews the play by play of a bear fight.

I think it's apparent that he was mentally ill. He constantly talked about how he was 'protecting' the bears, though really did no such thing. He knew that they were dangerous animals and that they could kill him. However that only served to be the big fuck you to the world he was so in search of. "These bears can kill people - but not me - I'm surviving - I'm their friend".

He seemed to have a very sheltered view of wild animals and their existence despite living among them for 13 summers. He was devastated by every bear or fox cub death, like events had just taken an apocalyptic turn, instead of realising that was the way of the world.

His girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, died alongside him, and if there's a victim in all this its her. She's almost invisible in the story as Treadwell was keen to portray himself as completely alone with the bears even although Amie followed on with him, despite not being 100% convinced it was the right thing to do.

The film reveals that he was a reformed alcoholic and when I heard that it all made a little more sense. He had replaced one dangerous crutch for another.

There's a lot of differences of opinion in the film. The people that knew him all seemed to love him, but experts in the field that Treadwell worked in all thought he'd been disrespectful to the creatures he claimed to love and he'd brought his demise on himself.

I'm always fascinated by people who have one defining moment in their lives that takes their life in one particular direction when it could have been so much different. I won't reveal it here, but I found Treadwell's moment fascinating.

Herzog, a famed nutcase in his own right, offers a balanced and moving film. He obviously admired and cared for Treadwell, though he differed with him on many of his life views. It's a documentary well worth seeing, that takes home 4 Tom stars.

Here's an interview with Herzog about the making of the film.