Film Review: Grizzly Man

PARK CITY, Utah (Hollywood Reporter) - Using a dead man's astonishing footage and a few key interviews, Werner Herzog has in "Grizzly Man" made a gripping, one-of-a-kind movie.
It's a journey into a heart of darkness, where nearly everything one sees seeks to deny that darkness. It's one of the best nature films ever made, a brilliant and poetic portrait of a haunted yet happy man mired in controversy and a provocative meditation on the Walden ideal and man's romance with the myth of nature and its innocence.
Produced by the Discovery Channel's theatrical documentary unit and Lions Gate, "Grizzly Man" already has its TV and theatrical exposure assured. Each undoubtedly will promote the other, but, really and truly, this is one documentary you've got to see on a big screen.
Timothy Treadwell, a well-known advocate for the grizzly bear who lectured about and fought for the preservation of the animal, died in October 2003. He was killed and partially devoured along with his girlfriend Amie Huguenard by a grizzly in Alaska's Katmai National Park and Reserve.
Herzog gained access to the 100 hours of film Treadwell shot during 13 summers he spent among the bears in the Kodiak archipelago. Treadwell carried no weapon and fancied himself a friend and protector of these fierce and enormous wild beasts. He gave the bears and other wild animals names and, ignoring criticism by wildlife experts, portrayed bears in a book and his lectures to schoolchildren as cuddly creatures.
The first and most admirable thing Herzog does is to treat Treadwell as a fellow filmmaker. He finds in the beautifully shot footage a compelling aesthetic. "I discovered a film of human ecstasies and darkest inner turmoil," he says, "as if there was a desire in him to leave the confinements of his humanness and bond with the bears."
Herzog then explores the root of this desire to mutate into a wild animal. Interviews and the footage itself demonstrate that, for Treadwell, this was partially a spiritual experience and partially a desire for distance from human society, where he did not fit in and which often filed him with rage.
Possibly a manic-depressive, Treadwell failed at a Hollywood career -- he supposedly was a contender for the Woody Harrelson role in "Cheers" -- and allowed drugs and alcohol to eat away at his self-worth. Then he discovered the land of the bears. That proved stimulant enough.
Standing in front of his carefully positioned camera as bears graze or fish nearby, Treadwell in a high-pitched and overly excited voice rhapsodizes about his love for wild animals and extols the virtues of bear life.
Locals and scientists rightly protest to Herzog that Treadwell crossed an invisible boundary carefully erected between humans and grizzlies and that his socialization of the animals took away the bears' natural fear of men. One even insists that poaching never really has been a serious threat to the thousands of grizzlies in Alaska.
Yet Treadwell did achieve ecstasy and a wary peace within the bear community. (He is believed to have been killed by a bear he did not know.) Dwelling among wildlife enabled him to thumb his nose at civilization. It was his way to rebel against society and create a fiction about himself.
He pretended to be an Australian when he actually came from New York. In the film he never got to make, he wanted to portray himself as a man alone in the wilderness, when in fact he often had woman companions whom he was careful to keep out of view. He fashioned himself into a grizzly man, half bear and half man, who clearly favored his animal side.
Herzog's narration is insightful and lyrical yet grounded in reality. He refuses to get sucked into the myth of animal nobility and innocence. He sees rather a natural kingdom filed with chaos and violence. Herzog has throughout his career been a master of portraying human obsession. In Timothy Treadwell, he might have found his ultimate obsessed man.
Richard Thompson's guitar-flavored score is a beaut.
Director-narrator: Werner Herzog; Producer: Erik Nelson; Executive producers: Billy Campbell, Tom Ortenberg, Kevin Beggs, Phil Fairclough, Andrea Meditch; Director of photography: Peter Zeitlinger; Music: Richard Thompson; Editor: Joe Bini.