Grizzly Man (documentary); open spoilers

Cafe Society
1

I just watched this today and thought it was a well-made documentary. Good job of alternating between Timothy Treadwell’s film of the grizzly bears, foxes, and scenery and the interviews with people who knew him or knew of him. Kudos to Werner Herzog.
That said, Treadwell is one of the most irritating people I have ever seen in any context. Here are just a few examples:

–his whiny, high-pitched, breathless way of speaking;

–his constant repetition;

–always telling every critter he sees, dead or alive, that he loves it and thanking it for being his friend [not that I have any problem with those who love nature and animals, but keep reading…]

–his obsession with the grizzly preserve and his perception of himself as some kind of savior;

–his failure to understand that lack of rain and dead animals are part of a natural process;

–putting his hands on fresh bear poop because…well, he loves it.

Some of the above got on my nerves so much that I had to fast-forward for a bit because I couldn’t bear (ha ha) to listen to him.
I don’t for one minute doubt that he was sincere in his appreciation of, and commitment to, these animals. But he just didn’t get it that being so close to them was probably doing them more harm than good. Not to mention the fact that he and his girlfriend wound up dead because he just didn’t know when to quit and had blurred the line between the bear world and the human world. Also, it’s never a good idea to put one’s finger right up to a wild animal’s mouth–in this case, it was a fox–because that is just asking for trouble. There is a reason why people are told to stay at least 100 yards away from the critters.

I do think he had some serious mental and emotional issues that should have been dealt with as well. He kept ranting and raving about poachers, and poaching wasn’t even a big problem in the national park where he was camping; thus, he seemed to be paranoid-delusional in his last months on earth. I think he was beginning to believe that he was himself a bear, and/or that the bears were a lot like us.

And now, I’m going to move my teddy bear off my computer table because it’s looking at me and I’m getting a bit creeped out.

2

Me too. And it was told without Herzog even trying to tell it at all.

Everything Treadwell did just seemed like a totally desparate cry for attention. He was a VERY annoying guy. Not really a sympathetic character. Completely delusional, which is all right, but he was arrogant about it. He created problems in his own mind, and then created in his own mind a way to solve them.

As a documentary. . .fascinating.

The bear wrestling match is one of the most memorable things I’ve ever seen on a movie screen.

3

Say what you will about Treadwell: whiny-voiced, delusional, annoying, arrogant–I’ll agree with all that.
BUT–you know, Herzog showed us this guy who had found a way live life on his own terms, if only for a season at a time, for 13 years. He couldn’t make it in the “real” world,so he chose to live-and die-with the grizzlies. That’s where Tim Treadwell felt truly alive. And who are we to begrudge him that?

4

I’ll begrudge him that. His “life on his own terms” led to the violent death of his girlfriend, as well as the deaths of at least two bears who approached the campsite during the investigation.

5

As to the death of his girlfriend, she went with him of her own free will. In the movie, we never get to learn anything about her or her motivations for going. But, no one said anything about her being coerced into accompanying him. She had to have known the risks involved.

It’s sad that they had to kill the bears, though. Sure, Treadwell is responsible for their deaths. Just like the rest of us are: whenever animals get in our way, or threaten us, they die.

6

I’m looking forward to seeing the movie.
That said, he was crazy. Sad for the girlfriend and the bears.

7

I read articles after the incident that said that he would have been destroyed at the thought that bears were killed, that he’d said repeatedly beforehand that should anything happen someday, he didn’t want any “retribution.” Sorry, doesn’t work that way, buddy, and he knew that. Bears that attack people get killed. He said he knew the bears well enough to not have to carry bear spray or any other protection, and that he would be “honored to end up in bear scat.” (Cite) Yet during the attack, he was yelling for his girlfriend to beat the bear(s) with something, IIRC.

He knowingly, willingly, intentionally put the bears he claimed to love at risk by his behavior over those years. He was willing to allow another human being, one he loved, to risk her own life as well. And in the moment of truth, he decided that being part of bear scat wasn’t such a good idea after all, but had previously cast aside all defenses that might have prevented that.

8

He was yelling for her to get away. She grabbed a frying pan and attacked the bear against his wishes.

He was nuts. Interesting, I’ll grant you, but nutz with a capital Z.

9

I saw it tonite for the first time and finished it conflicted about one matter and feeling resolute about another.

Treadwell was, in a word, whacked. For whatever reasons, be it clinical depression or simply way too much experimentation and chronic use of drugs, his disconnect with reality was one in which he and those around him would probably be at increased risk even in more ordinary, cosmopolitan circumstances. Stick him in the middle of bear central at Katmai though and it’s simply a matter of time.

I’d previously been very angry with Treadwell, feeling that his irresponsible, selfish meddlings up there had, as others have mentioned, been directly responsible for the death of one other human and at least two bears. But after seeing this, while I was still disturbed by his incoherent rants and inconceivable notion that he was damn near some freakish bearclone himself, I guess I’ve mellowed a bit toward him just out of abject pity for such a misguided soul, one obviously incapable of righting his own ship.

Parts of his persona were able to generate feeling of admiration, pity, loathing and respect, he was on a whole more complex than I anticipated. But the essence of his quest was just so flawed from the outset that in the end it just left me sad for everyone and everything he touched.

What I did admire, almost in parallel to my observations of Treadwell, was Hertzog’s magnificent construction of the tale. Comparisons to Into The Wild were inevitable but, with so much more to work with, it inevitably reached a level far and beyond. Instead of notes scribbled into the margins of a bible, there were generous hours of self analysis and fears expounded, all caught on tape, many repeated ad nauseum but more telling nonetheless.

Tim had his demons and his reasons for being where he was are ones we can only speculate about. But as to whether a person should devote their time to see Grizzly Man, I can only offer a most heartfelt endorsement. It’s gonna move you and it’s gonna make you think, shrink back in horror and feel, of that you can be sure.

10

Justa question - I hadn’t heard of this guy at all, a google serach turned up this page which quotes a park ranger as saying

Where are you getting your information from FerretHerder & NoCoolUserName ?

11

The Wikipedia article on Timothy Treadwell has a decent summary:

And the contents:

12

I saw part of this just the other night, but an emergency at the data center made me miss most of it. So, I might be way off base here.

Anyway, I didn’t see enough to really get a “feel” for his usual way of speaking, or form an objective opinion of the guy as a person, but did see plenty of the high-pitched speaking when he was talking to the animals.

So, kinda off-center question: Isn’t that the way you are supposed to talk to animals, especially with realitively unfamiliar animals? That is, I think I read somewhere that this is a non-threatening way to speak to them.

If so, this may be the reason for what is (to us, the viewers) a very annoying speech mannerism.

But again, I just didn’t see enough of it to know if this is instead his normal way of speaking. If it is, I agree that it would drive me bananas to llisten to him for any length of time.

I do agree that his risks seemed almost insane to me and unrealistic with regard to wild and dangerous animals.

13

I’m not Randy of the Redwoods or anything, but I don’t think you are supposed to be talking to a grizzly. Period.

What I was thinking during the whole movie was: Humans don’t look or smell like food to a bear, so maybe you can get away with being careless some percentage of the time. Press your luck long enough, and you will eventually come across a bear hungry or desperate enough to cross the line. Tim even mentions that ‘Ollie’ is just such a bear, but he doesn’t seem to have treated him with any more caution than the others. I’m convinced that he did commit suicide by bear, whether it was a conscious decision or not.

14

I saw this movie a couple of weeks ago and thought about starting a thread on it. I thought it was fascinating, with wonderful footage of the bears, but I also thought Treadwell was a loon. He didn’t seem to really know anything about bear behavior, and seemed to have this urban “Yogi just wants the picnic basket” attitude about them. Someone in the film asked him about taking weapons with him on his excursions, and he said that he would “never come into the bears’ home and kill them”. So, even though he recognized that he was in their home, he certainly did not respect their boundaries.

 I was also disturbed at the way someone (it may have been Herzog) characterized Treadwell's death as "murder" by the bear.  It was a wild animal whose territory was encroached upon by what he saw as food.  It boggles the mind why humans are surprised when wild animals act like, well, wild animals, and then we feel the need to kill them for it.  

That said, I also thought that the bear wrestling match was amazing, and it's too bad that Treadwell wasn't satisfied keeping his distance.  If he hadn't started trying to treat the bears like big brown labrador pups, he could have shown us just as much about them without dying for it.
15

I remember this guy from his appearance on Letterman.

From the IMDB:

16

He was a mentalist, totally.
The quote above is the key. He was harming the bears by living in such close proximity, enuring them to the presence of humans. Humans who travel to that part of the world are there for fish or bear. To kill them. So just his 13 years of selfish, arrogant, law breaking camping was an act of eco damage. The scenes with the foxes were heartbreaking, to think of their wildness being taken from them by a nutter made me sad, and then angry. The interview with curator of the local native museum is the most illuminating: the respect for the wild world that his people have had for 5,000 years is an unbroken truce until Treadwell shows up. By the end I was rooting for the bears. Herzog has made a career of movies about life threatening obsessions. This movie is beautiful, and very moving. And, yeah the bear fight is “nature, red in tooth and claw”!
Reminded me about the Chris Mccandless story.

17

I saw this on Discovery last night for the first time, and they did include the Letterman clip.

I agree with most everyone else in this thread that the guy was definitely not playing with a full deck. The thing that I found odd was that sometimes he talked about how the bears were protecting him, and at other times he talked about how he was protecting them. I never really did see anything that indicated that he was doing much to protect them – even in the scene with the “poachers”, he stayed hidden and didn’t confront them at all.

18

Not only does, as Shoeless mentions, the Discovery presentation include the Letterman quip clip, it also presents after the film a telling 30 something minutes of discussion by those that knew Tim, addressing some of the issues raised by the film and whether or not they’re just. It does help round out your impression of him as a person and I think helps add to the accuracy of the story. Believe I remember there to be an encore presentation scheduled for today, hopefully with more to follow.

What remains an enigma though was Treadwell’s girlfriend. Film of her is rare, the last audio where she’s a critical player is understandably omitted and apparently her family has requested that her depiction be kept to a minimum, which Hertzog respected. You get the sense that she was not as naive about the dangers as she was originally portrayed to be, but she remains a tragic victim nevertheless.

19

He was doing the high-voice thing even when there were no animals around.

I thought the scene with the fox and the hat was actually the best illustration of his dumbassitude. He (a) encourages wild animals to come into his camp and play with his stuff; (b) gives the animals personal names and tries to develop one-to-one rapport with them; (c) doesn’t protect his important gear; (d) lets the fox grab his hat and go running off and then tries to reason with the fox about why it should give back his hat.

What the hell was the guy thinking? :confused:

20

Obviously, not much.He was definitely not playing with a full deck.