Filmmaker Werner Herzog adds another real-life character to his growing pantheon of people who walk a fine line between visionary genius and madness in this documentary. Timothy Treadwell was a self-styled authority on bears who, starting in 1990, would spend as much time as possible each year in Alaska, camping out near a grizzly bear habitat. While Treadwell claimed to love the bears and felt as one with them, he had no formal training in their behavior, and while familiarizing himself with
the creatures he would walk within a few feet of them with a video camera in hand. To many, Treadwell seemed part man of nature, part conjuror, and part self-promotion expert, but the part that guided his kinship with the bears failed him in 2003, when he and his girlfriend were killed in a grizzly attack. Treadwell shot hundreds of hours of footage of himself and the grizzlies, and Herzog has used this footage as the core of Grizzly Man, a documentary look at Treadwell's life and death, while also including interviews with people who knew him, animal experts, and scientists. Acclaimed British guitarist Richard Thompson composed and performed the film's musical score. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
What makes Grizzly Man remarkable are the edited tapes that at first seem to show a man at peace among nature, and then later reveal the startlingly fragile state of that man's mind and persona.
Werner Herzog forgoes judging Timothy Treadwell's disputed methods or questionable mental state - letting viewers decide based on footage that suggests Treadwell essentially sought some sort of transmutation from flesh to fur.
Amazingly, while being interviewed, Herzog is shot in the belly by a passer-by with an air rifle... and so the director's personal myth as an intrepid outsider is perpetuated.
Treadwell, a failed TV actor, is presented as someone desperate to give and receive love. That he went to such extremes is tragic, but also, in Herzog's sympathetic eyes, deeply human.
As a character critique it is hardly a mauling, for Herzog is too sophisticated a thinker, too respectful towards his subject, and altogether too humane to tear Treadwell apart for a second time.
Uma das maiores obras-primas da carreira de um cineasta que vem conquistando, ao longo dos últimos 44 anos, um lugar mais do que merecido entre os ícones da Sétima Arte.
After having gorged on nonfiction films that tell us what to think, Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man is an improbable palate cleanser, allowing us to not know what to think and encouraging us to admit as much.
Part punk wildlife doc, part diary of a twisted soul, part cautionary tale, Grizzly Man is a complex, unique and engrossing journey into the murky recesses of an unhinged mind.
"For once there is weakness they will exploit it, they will take me out, they will decapitate me, they will chop me into bits and pieces. I'm dead. But so far, I persevere. Persevere."A devastating and heartrending take on grizzly bear activists Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard, who were killed in October
of 2003 while living among grizzlies in Alaska. REVIEWThe lives and deaths of Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard in the wilds of Alaska are far from simple. Treadwell fancied himself a lone man holding back the evils of civilization from the bears he loved. As to whether he actually did that or any good is open to debate.Werner Herzog took the hundred plus hours of footage shot by Treadwell, adding his own footage of interviews with people who knew Treadwell and formed it into a documentary that tries to get into the mind of man and to understand what he was trying to do.(The film is almost totally silent about Huguenard, who barely appears in any of the footage and who's family and friends refused to speak to Herzog) Its a riveting portrait of an obsessive man who ultimately had his own view of the world and of nature. Its an up and down portrait that makes you think and feel and think some more as we travel along with Herzog in his attempt to get to know a man who died doing what he loved.As with many of the people that Herzog has profiled in the past you both love and hate the man, who turns out to be far more shaded than most black and white portraits ever are. Frankly I don't know what I think of Treadwell and his mission to "save the bears" since its never clear what he was actually doing other than being a "bear" himself. I'm troubled by the fact that the one time we see other people come close to the bears Treadwell remains in hiding as these "tourists" throw rocks at his friends. Its an interesting turn from a man who professes endlessly that he is keeping the bears safe. Which is the real Timothy Treadwell? I don't have an answer. Its a question thats going to be haunting me for several days to come. Its the sort of reaction I love to get from a movie since it forces you to think about what you've just seen instead of having it spoon fed to you.See this movie. Its a movie that shows you more than just cute little animals roaming in the wild. Its a film that makes you wonder about mankind and his place in the world and in the wild. (Just be ready for very graphic descriptions of the deaths of Treadwell and his girlfriend)
April 4, 2009
Lorenzo von Matterhorn
Super Reviewer
Man Timothy Treadwell was stupid, like, really stupid. I love Herzog documentaries because they're ostensibly about the subject and then shift into something completely different, almost perverse. I'd love to pick his cavernous brain sometime.
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