Grizzly Man
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Movie Reviews of Grizzly Man
Movie Review: 5 Stars, but not because the documentary was good
Summary: 5 Stars
Like others who have come across this on Discovery I found this documentary interesting and disturbing. I was and still not interested who this character Treadwell is, but I am interested in what an idiot he was. Wow, top notch idiot. This is a must see for all parents and people who think drugs are not bad. As clearly stated by Treadwells own friend, Timothy was a drug addict at one time, an alcoholic, and on top of that Bi-Polar. He actually removed himself from his own meds because "he needed his ups and downs".
With that we take off for the wilderness and to protect the brown bear. As stated by government officials those bears are in no danger of population decrease, yet Timothy decided they needed protection. A lot of good he did. The only scene I remember involving poachers (which looked more like fisherman on a canoe), Timothy stayed hidden in the bushes filming. Even when they started throwing rocks at one bear (not cool by any means and they should have been reported to the park) but he stays in the bushes. So we never see the danger the bears were supposedly in. We also learn that poaching was nearly non-existent while Treadwell was there, great, but it starts up right after he dies. One possible explanation is that his story actually attracted more people to the location.
Is the film good looking? Yes, some really great wildlife scenes which in my opinion should have been the direction of Timothy's task. Unfortunately they are interupted by Timothy's psychotic rants which in some cases you will see were shot several times to get his message across. Yes, he actually will do several takes on his rants against the government. My personal favorite moment of clarity in this film is when he is in his tent during late summer. He is pissed that the river levels are so low and the salmon won't make there run. He screams at God, I mean screams at God, because Butterball (or whatever name he gave a bear that day) won't be able to eat. Is it sad? Yes, but that has been part of nature for millions of years. The weak will not survive and the strong will carry on. This jackass even tries to move rocks on the river to allow more water through. What he does not take into account is that moving those rocks might mess with the migration of the salmon. Perhaps those rocks keep the water speeds down a little so they can get in the river, instead they might have something more like a waterfall to climb.
My favorite part is the laws he broke. By law I believe you are not allowed to be within 100 yards of Grizzlies. Obviously things happen that does not allow that, but you make every effort to get to that distance, he doesn't do this. #2 according to that park you have to change your camping site every week to a location no nearer than 1 mile from the old. He fails that one too. Not sure if this is a law or a guideline but when camping in these areas you are supposed to camp in the open fields (the bears will know they are there and will usually avoid them), Timothy camps in camo in bushes, within patches of woods. 0 for 3, great job.
What I don't like besides this guys general outlook and insane ranting is that he drags Amie along with him on the last trip. Perhaps her fault that she came but it was noted in her diary how frightened she was of the bears and was thinking of leaving Timothy on the trip. Unfortunately, there was no place to go. He was so detached from humanity.
You will see in the documentary that while Timothy and Amie were attacked and killed, he actually had the time to turn the camera on and record it (I would think run, fight, or crap myself before I would think to film but whatever), but he never got the cap off the camera. So the only thing recorded was the sound, but they won't play it on TV. The wacked narrator (after listening to the tape) advises his ex-girlfriend/co-founder of their organization is that she should destroy it. Hopefully someone made a copy.
Some will say this is a story of a man finding his own happiness and human spirit. And maybe we should all take a look at ourselves in the world we created. You know maybe we should take a good look at what we have created and who we are but the bottom line is this guy was off his rocker. I take more from Jane Goodall for her mission, and from others that push themselves for thankless lives but do what they do because it makes the world better. Treadwell did nothing for the bears except put them in danger of humans. He put himself in danger which as a result killed one of the bears, and his friend Amie. As humans are only tasks with the wild places of our world should be that of passion to preserve them, to stay out and not be a part of the complex habitat, and to respect the animals. Treadwell in my mind does not display any of this, how could he, he thought he was a bear. I don't understand how anyone can support this guy, I mean I know we want to believe in his mission but he makes it impossible to trust him. Between the rants, the wardrobe changes, left hooking a bear in the head, endangering himself, amie, and the bears, how can you believe this guy?
Enjoy the scenery, the bears, the foxes, and mute the rest.
Movie Review: Frightening Yet Absorbing Look At A Man At The Edge!
Summary: 5 Stars
One of the most troubling aspects of contemporary American culture is the way in which it seems to engender an enforced emotional estrangement from the natural world taken in its own context and substitutes solipsistic fantasies on its citizens. Thus we have nitwits so completely out of touch with the realities of the natural world beyond man's realm that they try to keep Bengal tigers as house pets, or release alligators into local ponds. Yet nowhere are the tragic consequences of such a debilitating divorce from natural reality more evident than in "Grizzly Man" an absolutely compelling, artful, and horrific cinematic look by renowned director Werner Herzog at Timothy Treadwell, a man who attempted to bridge the gap between the world of man-made artifice and the natural world of nature.
Herzog focuses his lens and his fascinating documentary on the life and death of Treadwell, a man who leapt quite suddenly and unexpectedly from his boring and evidently stultifying suburban lifestyle to quickly and famously establish himself, literally in mid-life, as a singular personality, a self-fashioned and self-educated grizzly bear scholar, as indeed, the one man who manages successfuly to live among the bears. This is as in 'grizzly bears', the largest, most awesome, and most terrifyingly predatory mammal this since of 19th century hominads.
For those of us raised on the over-sweet sacharrined sensibilities of Television-land's Grizzly Adams, a handsome and rugged cuss whose best buddy and constant companion is a congenial and photogenic grizzly bear named Gentle Ben, a more accurate look beyond this Hollywood confection into the terrifying reality of just how powerful a force of nature these bears represent is mind-boggling, and is done with both considerable dramatic flair and a dollap of deadly detail offering a heady if troubling glimpse into the edgy psyche of someone over-the top enough to attempt this wild-eyed venture into the habitat of the grizzly bear, a man who manages successfully to reinvent himself as a born-again naturalist-celebrity, one minute covorting on the David Letterman show and promoting his colorful monographs detailing the world of the Ursus Terribilis, and the next minute treading with abandon, panache and pluck into the lair of the bears.
Werner Herzog directs and produces this film in a way that lays out in all its compelling complexity the remarkable irony of Treadwell's star-crossed life, someone who on one hand seems so relaxed, so knowledgable, and so lovingly concerned with the bears, and yet on the other hand appears to have been a man whose own personal recklessness and interpretation and understanding of the natural world is somehow romanticized to an extent sufficient enough for him to suffer a fatal mauling by a bear after pitching his tent unknowingly in a grizzly feeding ground, a fact which the director obviously feels to be directly related to Treadwell's dreamy and sometimes arrogant indifference about his precariously presumptuous relationship with the bears. Substitute the term 'grizzly bear' with that of 'great white shark', and one can begin to recognize the preposterous nature of this continuing attempt to live among the bears. Without being too trite, think "Jaws" with claws, and you can understand the all-too predictable nature of his eventual mauling, murder and ingestion by a 1000 pound male grizzly bear.
Finally, then, the author's final fate is dealt to him by the very impersonal and cruel indifference of nature that he so casually misunderstands, and one feels in viewing the film that this unoftunate end to Treadwell's life was a highly predictable event, although it seems to be an especially lurid and even sensational avenue that offers the film-goer a unique opportunity to investiage and explore the margins of Treadwell's admittedly brilliant albeit unconventional attempt to bridge the gap between the world of humans and those of the natural world. Unfortunately for the "Grizzly Man" of the title, Treadwell attempted once too often to interact on his own terms rather than those of the bears. So, while it is sometimes a bit too graphic and blood-thirsty (as when they are describing a re-creation of the six-minute plus mauling and eating of the author and his companion), it is a wonderful movie, one that serves to remind us in quite powerful terms that out in the natural world, beyond the man-made artificialities we all mistake for incontrovertible reality, there still live such terrifying creatures for whom we are nothing more substantial than the afternoon's groceries. Enjoy!
Movie Review: A Haunting Documentary About a Man Who Lived Amongst Bears and Died a Grisly Death
Summary: 5 Stars
Grizzly Man is Werner Herzog's 2005 documentary about Timothy Treadwell, a man who spent 13 summers in a National Preserve in Alaska living amongst grizzly bears. At the end of his 13th summer in 2003, Timothy and his girlfriend were killed by a bear. Whether you like Treadwell or not, Herzog has crafted a fascinating documentary about the man who filmed his exploits over the course of his thirteen summers at the preserve. Herzog blends over 100 hours of Treadwell's footage in with interviews of people who knew him or knew of him. This is a Herzog film, so some of these people (notably the coroner) stand out as being a little quirky but you might not notice then when seeing footage of Treadwell.
Clearly Treadwell's passion and disregard for the dangers involved are what attracted Herzog to this project, as Herzog is known to be a very passionate man who disregards things that stand in his way. Through this footage and interviews with his close friends, we can deduce that Treadwell was a troubled man-child, slightly delusional but very passionate about the bears that he lived amongst. Deep down he was a good person, but a flawed one. When not at the preserve, Treadwell would tour schools and (free of charge) share his interaction with grizzly bears with schoolchildren. My own personal opinion of Treadwell is one of mixed feelings. It's hard to defend the sanity of someone who gets excited over bear excrement, but I admire his dedication (no matter how flawed it was) and in a way I find him an inspiring figure. Treadwell, in his footage, speaks frequently of death and how living amongst grizzly bears could lead to him dying but he seems okay with that. Although not on the DVD edition, but in the film at one point, Treadwell was interviewed by David Letterman who asked him if we would go on to read an article about how he'd been eaten by bears, a question he took with denial and good-humor. Love him or hate him, Treadwell died doing something he loved and was passionate about. How many people can you say that about? Unfortunately, Treadwell's girlfriend also perished in this mishap and, while this film does little to enlighten us about her story, she seemed more passionate about Timothy's passion than she did about bears making her seem even more tragic.
The film is narrated by Herzog is his wonderful German-accented dialect and emotionless delivery. Herzog has never been a conventional filmmaker and while his narration serves to inform us of the background of several scenes, he also uses it to give us his own perception of Treadwell. What no one can deny no matter what their thoughts are on Treadwell and his cause is that the man obtained some beautiful, ethereal footage. As Herzog puts it (and I'm paraphrasing) `No studio director could hope to capture images as beautiful as Timothy did.' Scenes such as a fox trotting up to Timothy unannounced in the middle of his monologue and a scene of two bears fighting achieve a very rough, real beauty that you can't find in even the most stylized, high-budgeted nature documentary.
Herzog's Grizzly Man is a great achievement in documentary filmmaking and one of the most accessible documentaries I've seen. Herzog takes Treadwell's footage and makes something exquisite out of it that I doubt Treadwell ever envisioned possible. While Treadwell reached a tragic and (no pun intended) grisly end, Grizzly Man is a very humorous documentary that treats its subject with both skepticism and respect. It's ultimately a haunting film and many images will likely remain with you. In the last bit of footage shot mere hours before his death, Herzog helpfully points out that Treadwell "seems hesitant to leave the frame of his own film" and watching the scene, I saw no reason to argue with him. Anyone expecting to see a video of Treadwell's death will be disappointed, as only audio exists and Herzog declines to use it in the film. While people are naturally fascinated by the morbid, we are told what happens on the tape so many times that Herzog's reaction to listening to it on-screen is effective enough to get the point across. While people may question the authenticity of the interview segments due to the strange, eccentricities of the people interviewed, my simple response would be: That's a Herzog film for you. Overall, it's a documentary that's not to be missed as it's a poignant, haunting, funny, and depressing film about a delightfully weird man who did what he loved to do and whether or not he was wrong or right to do so, he's a fascinating person that deserved this great documentary about him.
GRADE: A
Movie Review: Love will tear us apart. And then eat us.
Summary: 5 Stars
Timothy Treadwell loved grizzly bears; he lived among them for twelve odd years, filmed them, tried to protect them and ultimately was savagely killed by them along with his girlfriend in Alaska. This film, directed and narrated by acclaimed German film maker Werner Herzog, tries to understand his motives and offers differing views on Timothy's quixotic approach to wilderness conservation.
Let's start with the cinematography. Using a hand-held digicam Treadwell's footage is undeniably impressive. You can tell the zoom button is rarely used as he captures shots of fully-grown bears checking out his camp and shooting him hungry stares as he waxes lyrical about his favourite topic. He explains how he cannot be seen to be weak and refuses to give ground to the alpha males or tries to stroke the bear cubs with the mother just yards away. Ozzie Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, has nothing on this bloke. If a fight ever ensued, you know that Timothy would come off a very poor second and since the manner of his death is revealed early on in the film you always feel that violent dismemberment is a distinct possibility. The 100 plus hours of film that was edited into this film captures the full majesty of the expansive landscape and also the personal drama and relationship with nature incredibly.
In contrast with March of the Penguins, for example, Grizzly Man's focus is not on the animals themselves, but on one man's obsession. Park Rangers and ecologists discuss whether this hands-on approach is really beneficial to the animals. Treadwell makes clear his pacifism and that he would never harm a bear, while the rangers explain that to maintain their numbers a 6% cull is necessary each year and that having the bears get used to a human presence is probably not in their best interests. With each passing year Treadwell associates more with the bears than civilization, highlighted well when he films fellow bear watchers with the kind of paranoia that comes from sitting in a tent with just your teddy for company for weeks. Treadwell is clearly a driven man, and Herzog suggests that this drive comes from wanting to belong to something simpler, nobler and fairer than his life in Los Angeles or Florida would allow. I love that Herzog points out that nature is far from this Utopian ideal. Nature is brutal, dangerous and based on a hierarchical food chain and that's something Morgan Freeman never mentioned about his penguins ("This is a story about love..."). Treadwell turns a semiblind eye to evidence that mature bears have obviously devoured one of their offspring, mentioning all kinds of mitigating circumstances like they would have died of starvation if they hadn't eaten him...
The score by Richard Thomson is fantastic. On the DVD there is a 45 minute mini documentary about its making which could easily be watched in isolation from the film. Thomson is perfect for creating the rough-edged, plaintive soul of the film, nature with a hint of menace, beauty tempered with imminent brutality. Seeing how he crafts the guitar sounds, with cello and acoustic bass, around the progression of a scene is a lesson in professional sound tracking. Herzog is also instrumental in the direction of the sound track. My favourite moment comes when he berates the percussionist for sounding too much like a `bongo playing hippy in Golden Gate Park'. While Treadwell has undeniable hippy tendencies, Herzog eschews direct musical clichés and encourages the band to explore the space and atmosphere of Alaska without sounding like `music for truckers'. Again, compare this to the saccharine Penguins soundtrack which had more in common with Bambi than the unforgiving Antarctic wasteland where it was filmed.
This is a fascinating film which succeeds on many levels. It is perfectly paced featuring candid interviews with friends and colleagues, interspersed with the choicest footage of the bears and, more importantly, the man. Had Treadwell lived to edit his own documentary together it would have been very different, no matter what Herzog implies in his commentary. His film would have been geared towards painting the bears in the best light possible and excluded much of the inherent violence. And the scene where he rants for 5 minutes using very Californian expletives about the attitudes of the park rangers would probably have been left on the virtual cutting room floor. This film is an engaging and fitting tribute to a man whose passionate obsession with bears led to tragedy, yet whose story and filming can inspire similar passion about the wilderness.
Movie Review: Sometimes you eat the Bar---& sometimes, well, the Bar eats You
Summary: 5 Stars
Sometimes you eat the Bar---& sometimes, well, the Bar eats You., July 3, 2007
By James Stephen Garrett "Teep" (Arkham Asylum) - See all my reviews
"Grizzly Man" is the story of what happens when a Freak of Nature meets a Force of Nature.
The results aren't pretty. Tim Treadwell (the Freak) goes toe-to-toe with a young, hungry male Grizzly Bear (the Force). Bottom line: the Freak gets 187'd by the Force, who ends up using Treadwell's guts for garters (according to eyewitnesses, quite literally).
Long-haired Hippy tree-hugging dancing fools: Zero. Annoyed Alpha Male Bears: 1. The rest of us: 100!
Why? Because crazed, visionary film-maker Werner Herzog has effectively captured Treadwell's quixotic quest in his documentary "Grizzly Man", loaded it up with tons of raw footage, and served the demented---yet disconcertingly touching---story up smoking hot with his trademark fruitbat strangeness.
Herzog is a great choice to direct this one, considering the director's long-time obsession with crazy people. And Treadwell is a great subject: a naturalist! a teacher! a hiker! a conservationist! a King of the Sea!
By serving as a kind of mytic crystal revelatory channel to Treadwell's own peculiar brand of wonkish, Granola country wild-bore lunacy, Herzog's film serves as a fitting last testament to the man, additionally hooking up a kind of ephemeral shortwave radio into the craziness that---let's face it---made America what she is today.
The story is simple: Tim Treadwell---naturalist, conservationist, um, bear-itarian, crazy freaky monkey---loved the grizzly bears of Katmai National Park, in Alaska. Revered them. Adored them. Wanted to, uh, "protect them".
Think about that for a minute.
Treadwell probably tipped the scales at 150 pounds soaking wet, and a young male grizzly is looking svelte at around a ton, but Treadwell felt he needed to protect these brutes all the same. "Protect" them seems a little, well, insane, particularly when you get a shot or two of a couple of youjng male grizzlies unleashing a little jihad on each other around mating season, slapping each other in a playful ursine backhand that would leave a man's guts neatly delineated in a pile of bloody slop on the ground.
And that's when they were just playing.
Anyway, for 13 years, Treadwell spent the summer in Kamtai, ensconced in a pup-tent, fortified with some scant provisions, maybe a hand-camera & tripod-mount rig, a few camoflage do-rags, & a small army of stuffed animals. He had a stuffed bear, which gets quite a bit of air-time in "Grizzly Man", and serves as a fine example of what academics might call "foreshadowing".
He filmed himself. "Grizzly Man" is not so much the portrait of the grizzly in the wild, or a documentary about the Big Brown One's challenges in the rapidly shrinking outdoors (hey, Evolution sucks): it's really about a wild man living very close to the Edge.
Very close, until he slips over. And the joy of "Grizzly Man" is that through the film-footage and through Herzog's inspired interviews (was someone looting David Lynch's casting couch?), we get a very fine-hewn, very stark, gloriously intimate portrait of the man himself.
Treadwell let forth his barbaric yawp. He tried to bond with Nature in all Her howling Majesty. He tried to match his strength pound for pound and tooth by jowl with the furry grand eminences of the forest primeval, whose comradeship Treadwell wanted so desperately.
There is great tragedy here in watching this Holy Fool Treadwell stomp and fret and dance and rusticate amid the bears, and as the film winds down I can't help feeling Herzog's pessimistic conclusion is dead on: Nature is cold, callous, by-the-numbers. She doesn't do favors. Perhaps intelligence really *is* an evolutionary dead-end, in which we ponder how to save these beasts, this vast forest, this planet warmed, for now, by the furnace of a dying sun.
We invite them into ourselves. And they invite themselves to dinner.
JSG