Grizzly Man
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Movie Reviews of Grizzly Man
Movie Review: Tragic, Yet Somehow Inspiring
Summary: 5 Stars
Grizzly Man is the story of Timothy Treadwell, a wildlife advocate and educator, author, and environmentalist who lived among the giant grizzly bears of Kodiak island for thirteen summers. Treadwell took myriad photographs as well as documented hours of footage of the bears, red foxes, and his musings on life and nature.
In the fall of 2003, Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie were eaten alive by an old and starving grizzly who had come in from the inland while all the bears Tim knew had already begun their hibernation. Tim and Amie had already left for the year. He returned on a whim. In the last moments of the film, it is like watching a horror movie where you yell for the characters to run. Everything screams danger: the ominous gray skies, absence of wildlife, cold winds, and this lone bear who will not look Treadwell in the face.
The film is really worth seeing. I highly recommend it. Completely mesmerizing from start to finish, it touches your heart because of Treadwell's childlike character. As far as those reviewers who see his actions as reckless and stupid, it is because of insensitive people like them that Treadwell was driven into the wilderness. Nature is cruel, but so-called civilization is worse.
I am surprised that no comparisons were made in the film to the 1970's series Grizzly Adams, which was based on the true story of Adams. Adams lived happily among wildlife in the Sierra Nevada in the 1850's - then prime grizzly and cougar habitat. The call of the wild is very powerful. People who at their very essence love nature want to be a part of it to some degree. In cases like Treadwell, Henry David Thoreau, Farley Mowhat (Never Cry Wolf), and Diane Fossey (Gorillas in the Mist) this love is taken to an extreme.
As the director of Grizzly Man says, the movie can teach us about our own nature.
To explain Treadwell's heart, here is the theme from Grizzly Adams. Hauntingly apt.
Deep inside the forest there's a door into another land.
Here is our life and home.
We are staying here forever in the beauty of this place all alone.
We keep on hoping.
Maybe there's a world where we don't have to run.
Maybe there's a time we'll call our own, living free in harmony and majesty.
Take me home. Take me home.
Movie Review: Best documentary in years
Summary: 5 Stars
NOTE TO OTHER REVIEWERS: Please review the film itself, not the man of Timothy Treadwell. Almost every negative review for the film I have read notes how crazy Treadwell was and thus how pointless this documentary is. One reviewer even noted that he didn't learn anything new about bears, and thus the film was a failure. These people are missing the point. Regardless of your feelings towards Treadwell (I think he was a bit daffy myself), this is a fascinating and powerful character study of a tormented man.
Such negative sentiments toward the film would be understandable if it were a hero-worship documentary, but I did not get that vibe from it at all. Director/Narrator Herzog often voices when he disagrees with Treadwell, interviews people that had negative opinions of him (true, there are no right-wing nuts, but respected ecologists that disagreed with him are given their say), and at one point even says that Treadwell at times seemed overtaken with a madness (he says this during one of the movie's best scenes- Treadwell's rant against the actually effective park service).
What makes "Grizzly Man" so good is that it is the study of a flawed human being that met an end so ironic that it almost seemed a higher power was at work. Treadwell's attempts to communicate with the wild animals are both insane (touching bears on the noses, examining their feces) and touching (the friendships he seemingly develops with local foxes). His constant ranting against the humans he sees as harming the bears make him unreasonable and unsympathetic, but he also has scenes where he is sympathetic and even likeable (when he laments his past alcoholism, explains his difficulties communicating with women, expresses his love for the wilderness around him). We see both sides of Treadwell- the loving son and good friend, and the misguided wildman that dangerously habituated bears to the presence of humans.
Ultimately, "Grizzly Man" is the compelling and sad story of a unique (or strange) person. His inevitable end at the hands of the bears he so loved is both appropriate and sad (it is especially sad the woman who accompanied him was killed as well). Herzog in making "Grizzly Man" put together a documentary that will remain the standard of great documentaries for years to come. This was one of the best movies of the year.
Movie Review: "There is the smell of death on my fingers."
Summary: 5 Stars
So were some of the final words spoken by Timothy Treadwell and recorded by his own video camera in a documentary wherein most of the brilliant footage was shot by the deceased. Let me say at outset that this is an absolutely magnificent film. Its excellence is rarely encountered. Indeed, it is one of the few documentaries I ever longed to play a second time after it finished.
Treadwell was an environmental activist, and also, as his narrative makes clear, a very emotionally disturbed person. He failed at making it in society so he turned to the wilderness and the world of the "misunderstood" bear as a means to find fulfillment. He went to Alaska every summer to "save them" from poachers, but, as an authority stated, the animals were not in need of saving. Their population was so robust they needed to be culled by hunters each year. That the bears somehow needed Treadwell is just one of the many lies this man embraced. One person phrased it aptly: "He has styled himself the Prince Valiant of the bears."
The main character is quite pathetic, but the viewer has difficulty feeling sympathy for him due to his negligence in regards to his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard. I have never encountered an individual in my entire life with a bigger death wish that Treadwell. On camera, he imagines his own death several times, yet this supposedly compassionate person stayed with his girlfriend long past the gorged days of summer, and remained amidst the bears while the desperate ones searched for any scrap of nutrients in the hopes of surviving the winter. That he had not ever remained in the grizzly maze past summer before is evidence of his scripting his own demise, and allowing Huguenard to die alongside him was despicable. I'm a very politically incorrect man, and I don't buy into female victimization as a rule-except in this case. Treadwell led the poor woman to her death. Her biggest mistake was trusting the bipolar delusionist in the first place. In the film, he makes repeated references to wishing he were a homosexual, which his words, more so than his obvious effeminacy, suggest that he was struggling with a great many aspects of life. If you ask me, had his girlfriend possessed Gaydar then her death, the only truly tragic aspect of this calamity, might not have occurred. At any rate, Grizzly Man is amazing tour de force.
Movie Review: This is something to be seen.....
Summary: 5 Stars
Grizzly Man is the story of a man named Timothy Treadwell, a guy who spent 13 different summers living in the Alaskan wilderness with many different grizzly bears. He spent more than a 100 hours of videotaping the bears and himself living with them in their forestes and fields. This is one of the best documentaries ever made about how this man lived and breathed wild life.
The documentary goes on to show how Timothy lived and died with what he loved so much. His death was very tragic to both friends and family but even they say if he was killed by a grizzly bear it would be the one way he would have liked to have gone.
The documentary is filled with hundreds of beautiful shots of landscape. Mountains, lakes, streams, grass fields, and forests show just what Timothy loved to do and film. He made friends with foxes as well as bears and had names for what seemed like 2 dozen different seperate animals. What amazes me is that he remember the names for each animal and didn't even once seem to mix them up. Thats how long he lived out in the wild.
The documentary cuts from different shots of Timothy and what he dealt with besides videotaping the grizzlies. From yelling up at god, or allah, or "That floating Hindu thing" as he called it for a rainstorm to come so the salmon could swim upstream and the bears could eat, to watching people actually have the nerve to throw rocks at bears as they came to close as he hid in the bushes nearby.
A lot of different people who knew Timothy talked about how they knew Timothy and what they thought about what he did and how he died. While some say he actually got what he deserved [I personally disagree] to others who say he hated civillization compared to life in the wild, everyone seemed to agree that Timothy loved what he was doing and that he would never hurt a Grizzly bear on purpose.
The story is very gripping and just watching how Timothy talks about the bears and how he manages to approach them almost to where he could reach out and touch them is fascinating enough.
This is one documentary that you need to see for many reasons; for the scenery, for the footage of the great bears and foxes, to seeing friends and family spread the ashes of Timothy in a emotional scene, this is definately worth checking out.
Movie Review: The Ecstatic Truth is found, but not by Herzog
Summary: 5 Stars
Werner Herzog in the course of his long film career has consistently sought to present men at the very fringes of society, men who do battle with their inner demons whilst battling the insurmountable odds represented by nature itself. In this search, Herzog has taken himself to some of the most inhospitable terrains in the world, but little did he know that he would find the total apotheosis of this thematic concern in over 100 hours of material that was pre-existing and filmed by Timothy Treadwell. Herzog locating this material and making this film, puts into question all of the films he made in the hellish jungle locations he opted for and all the odds he overcame, because Treadwell has done all the work for him, which includes the unhappy ending. That Herzog should compose a huge percentage of his film out of pre-existing material, shows a post-modern concern with the appropriation of modern technology and as a result gives his film a reality never before seen. "Grizzly Man" is a unique and original film precisely because nobody else did what Treadwell has done, and as a result it highlights perfectly that the documentary form is perhaps the only film form that can have a serious claim to originality. But this is not the originality of an artist, but the originality of a somewhat misguided anti-hero, who genuinely thought he was at one with the bears in their own habitat. It is easy to sentimentalise the life of Treadwell, but Herzog's film illustrates the man as being all ego, as he preens and poses in front of the camera. He creates a persona for himself, in order to avoid the harsh realities of our world, and in so doing stepped over an invisible line into a territory that man has no place within. Herzog's voice over and argument is one which dates back to his feelings when he made "Fitzcarraldo" and its quite surprising to learn he hasn't changed much since then. The narration provides balance, condemning the arrogance and borderline insanity of Treadwell, but at the same time respecting his self styled eco warrior image and his ability to film some remarkable imagery that comes close to the inner truth that Herzog has sought throughout his career. In terms of Herzog's cinema, this is a masterpiece, but a huge amount of the credit for this would go to someone who is no longer here to enjoy it.