"Grizzly Man" (UNBOXED SPOILERS)

Cafe Society
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Saw Grizzly Man this morning; it was absolutely amazing. (I’m not sure the warning about spoilers was needed, since we all pretty much know how it’s going to end before we go in.) Anyway, a couple of observations:

I got the sense throughout the film that Treadwell had latched onto the bears as representing something; i.e., that his love for the bears wasn’t actually about the bears, but about something else. Maybe he was trying to show his own capacity for love? (Note that he gave his favorite fox his own name, “Timmy.”) His having apparently been a death-bent alcoholic, who got reformed when he discovered the bears, reminded me of some former extreme alcoholics I’ve known who only stopped drinking when they found something else to drown their self-loathing in, be it religion or exercise or what-have-you.

He seemed, at times, more concerned with making films about himself among the bears than with the bears themselves. Recall Herzog’s observation that Treadwell at times did 10 or 15 takes of a scene.

Throughout the film, I had a sense of something off about him. (That’s an understatement, I know.) He seemed to be trying very hard to act out a role he was envisioning in his head (remember he was a failed actor); the unflagging vigor with which he reminded us what a badass he is for his “work” with the bears seemed like an attempt to convince us and himself. His rant to the camera (and ostensibly to the U.S. Park Service) about “fuck you, I beat you, you’re pathetic and weak, I’m the winner, etc.” looked to me like he was re-enacting someting he’d seen someone else do. He didn’t seem genuinely angry or triumphant; I felt like I was watching the revenge of someone who’d been bullied in the past and was trying to find his own position of power and control for once.

Whatcha think?

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We’re going on Monday, but I can tell you that the guy was lunch waiting to happen.

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Almost everyone within earshot of a mention of this movie jumps to be the first one to say that, or a similar comment. I don’t know if it’s an attempt at humor, righteous condescension, or just what people think they should say, but I’ll be curious to see how you feel after you see the film. That Treadwell was “lunch waiting to happen” is more or less a foregone conclusion, and not really a topic or focus of the documentary.

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It seems clear that he was paranoid, bi-polar and delusional. Even so, I wish he had kept up on his meds and left when he planned to–it seems that he went back at a bad part of the season because of his problems with the general public. If he had been taking his medication, that probably would not have happened.

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What a fascinating film! I spent the first half hour thinking nothing but “what an asshole” – and he was, but Herzog gives us a way to understand him without sentimentalizing him. About two-thirds of the way through, some kids (?) in the back row were laughing at one of his rhapsodic monologues, and I was thinking, my god, do you guys have any idea what you’re seeing here?

BTW – Jackelope – I disagree with your take on the “fuck you” rant – it seemed like an authentic bipolar tear to me (and I’ve seen bipolar tears). What astonished me was that he then turned around and did a 45-second profanity-clean take that covered all the points he wanted to make.

The main thing that struck me was his insistence that he was somehow protecting the bears – and yet it was never clear to me if he had any idea whether he knew what that protection might consist of. As Ebert points out,

One of the best movies I’ve seen this year.

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I’m speaking from 58 years as an Alaskan. When you camp on bear trails and treat them as if they’re puppies, your bad end is a foregone conclusion. I have nothing but disdain for those who treat this country as an amusement park or open-air zoo. The movie not being focused on this doesn’t make it less true. The comment was made in disgust, not in jest.

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I’d be curious to hear your reaction to the movie, Chefguy. It actually is kind of about what a maniac this guy is.

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Yeah, my comment was rather gratuitous, I guess. Now we’re trying to decide if we go to this film or to ‘Constant Gardener’.

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The friend I saw Grizzly Man with last night saw Constant Gardener the night before – and loved both of them. So I can’t help you there.

Seriously, though, I’d love to get a native Alaskan’s take on this movie.

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Me too, and I apologize if my original comment seemed to convey otherwise. I just wanted to point out that a lot of people seem to think that the movie is glorifying Treadwell’s actions. Once you see the film you’ll realize that it’s anything but.

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Well, we went to see Grizzly Man after all. It’s very difficult for me to separate the subject of the film from the film itself, which is very well done. As a documentary it stands tall, although Herzog seems to agree with a lot of Treadwell’s nonsense. It’s an excellent documentation of a deluded soul who is fighting with inner demons, including his own sexuality, and who is bent on self-destructive and obsessive behavior.

As for Treadwell, his actions were best summed up by the curator at the museum in Kodiak: for all his protestations to the contrary, Treadwell disrespected his environment and the animals in it. Habituation is a death sentence for bears, and two were killed during the recovery of the remains. That he managed to avoid being killed for 13 years is remarkable, and probably due to not having to deal with non-habituated bears until that last season.

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That quick 180 was what made me suspect the sincerity of it. I got the impression that in his mind he was shooting a movie, and thought to himself, “OK, now I’ll do an agry take, just in case that comes out looking good.” I thought he just hadn’t made up his mind about how angry he was going to portray himself as being when he got to the editing stage.

For what it’s worth, Chefguy, I didn’t get the impression Herzog bought into Treadwell’s adulation of the bears; one of the things that impressed me most about the film was Herzog’s willingness to step in and say, “and by the way, I think he was over-romanticizing these bears; they didn’t love him.” That phrase about the bear’s “half-bored interest in food” was right-on target.

Come to think of it, didn’t Herzog explicitly say that he admired Treadwell not as a naturalist, but as a filmmaker? The more I reflect on this movie, the more I see it as a portrait of a filmmaker, not of an environmenal crusader.

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Yeah, very much so.

And I understand where you’re coming from on that 180 – but the rant that preceded it was clearly – well, clearly to me, anyway – not just about performance – the way it went on and on and on and on, circling and repeating – it felt like the real deal to me. [Personal disclaimer: My mother was bipolar, undiagnosed/unmeditated till I was in college, so I’ve seen some manic behavior.] Neither of is is a shrink, though, so who knows.

Chefguy – when my friend and I were discussing the movie, after, I was talking about the fact that all the people seemed to be living in their own little worlds – except for the curator, who I specifically excluded. Well, also the guy who said " he treats them like they’re people in bear costumes." (Who was that, the pilot?)

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I think Herzog admires Treadwell’s passion while disagreeing with most of his outlook on nature. I saw this at the Seattle Film Festival a few months ago, but I recall, towards the end, Herzog explicitly stating that he believes that nature is, essentially, cruel and indifferent, whereas Treadwell was a romantic, nature-is-wonderfully-harmonious kind of twit.

Herzog’s always admired single-minded zealots – he is the guy who directed Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, the Wrath of God, after all.

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Neither of which I’ve seen, unfortunately. I recall in a couple of instances where he says he departs from Treadwell’s view, but perhaps he is referring to his filming outlook.

Twickster: It was a pilot, but not the pilot who flew Treadwell. I thought his take on the bears’ thinking that Treadwell wasn’t right in the head was hilarious.

There is now a very well-reviewed book out by Nick Jans, who is a wonderful writer from Juneau, called The Grizzly Maze. I read an excerpt from it that was pretty chilling in its description of the killing grounds and the recovery team’s encounter with other bears.

Herzog (or maybe Wes Craven) could probably do an entire movie on the coroner. The guy is creepy.

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Yeah, I loved the first of the interviews with him standing next to the dissection table, where he talks for a couple of minutes, with the camera tight on his face, and then the camera pulls back and you seen the way he’s holding his hands. Yikes. Scary!

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I skimmed a few excerpts while I was in a bookstore recently. Jans heard the audiotape of the final bear assault, and gives an account of what was included that was nightmarish enough to make me glad that Herzog didn’t include any of it in the film.

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I thought the scene of Herzog listening to the tape–while we don’t hear it–was incredibly chilling, given that we’d already heard the coroner’s account of what’s on it. I had goosebumps.

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My points:

First of all, some of the shots of the bears and the wilderness were astounding. I could have watched the bear fight for an hour. I loved the scene where Treadwell went traipsing off leaving the camera to film the long grasses blowing in the wind. Not the mention the bear who kept diving to look for salmon, some of the shots of foxes. All beautiful. But totally beside the point, too.

I thought that Herzog neither glorified nor exploited Treadwell’s madness/love. I thought it was a completely antiseptic look at TT, cold and analytical.

And perhaps, that made Treadwell look worse. Because, to me, this guy came across as arrogant, not very bright, mad, sad, phony without Herzog making an overt gesture in that direction at all.

For one, I felt no “love” for him from any of the people who knew him. The actor guy sounded and looked like he was just doing a scene. I didn’t trust the sincerity of the woman with the tape, or the Alaskan woman he knew. That made TT’s story even sadder, I suppose and perhaps gave some rationale to his actions if I’m right.

Because, certainly the most interesting question about TT was WHY he was so in love with these bears. I tend to agree with Jackelope in this regard.

I too, thought that TT had a certain degree of self-loathing, and maybe not unrelated to this. . .I, and my wife, were both convinced he was gay – his protestations notwithstanding. Heck, his protestations were odd enough that it was really the first time I even considered it. Not that gay people are self-loathing, but perhaps gay people who attempt to live as heterosexuals are.

Anyway, that’s pure speculation, but Herzog gives you nothing to grab onto to think about why this guy was like he was. What got him into bears in the first place? Was his “stated goal” to educate children? In what way did he really think he was protecting bears? Was it not thought out on his part, or did Herzog just not let us in?

Brilliant documentary. Much more affecting than the penguins.

(Oddly enough, we were also deciding between Grizzly Man and Constant Gardener. We saw Grizzly because we could walk to it.)

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We went because I hate the popcorn at the other theater.