I just saw Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man.

[BurtWorm]

I am now being haunted by it. On the surface, it's a very simply made film: 100 hours of Timothy Treadwell's video of himself trying to get as close as possible to grizzlies edited down to an hour and a half documentary, interspersed with scenes of interviews by Werner Herzog with people who knew Treadwell or had other information about him (such as the coroner who investigated the mauling deaths of Treadwell and his latest girlfriend two years ago). But it's a very complex story.

Treadwell was no Marlin Perkins or Krofft brother. And despite his hermetic existence for the three or four months of each of the 13 years he spent in the Alaskan wild, he was not at all a burly, bearded mountain man. He was a surfer dude and recovering alcoholic, a failed actor (who apparently lost the role of the bartender after Coach on Cheers to Woody Harrelson), a narcissist who boasts about being the bears' guardian and keeps blowing them kisses and shouting "I love you!" at them, a self-mythologizer who is caught lying about being totally alone in the wild in a scene his girlfriend clearly filmed. Being *nearly* alone with bears in the wild, it seems, was his drug of choice. Or was self-mythologizing his drug? What was he doing making a movie about what a great savior to the bears (who didn't need a savior, least of all, one who got in their face) he was?

In short: :thumbsup:

[graywarrior]

1. I saw something about him on either 20/20 or Dateline

It totally freaked me out..I don't know why..but it gave me nightmares. I heard Werner interviewed on Terry Gross show and it sounded intriguing. I will have to go see it.

Thanks for the review.

[BurtWorm]

2. It's freaking me out a little.

And Herzog is very, very protective of Treadwell's and his girlfriend's dignity, so there are no visuals of the deaths, and the audio of the camera that happened to be running (with lens cap on) during the mauling makes a mercifully silent appearance as Herzog himself listens, flinching, then instructs one of Treadwell's friends never to listen to it and to destroy it.

But of course the deaths are present throughout the film. And Treadwell was a very strange (and strangely likable) guy.

[graywarrior]

4. He's a tragic figure, which makes what happened all the more

scarey. I think it's worse not hearing the tape. They played that scene on the show I saw, with Herzog listening in front of Treadwell's friend. It planted an image in my head that I could not shake all night...I kept waking up.

[BurtWorm]

6. Believe me, I have an image in my head.

I hope I don't keep waking up. My wife and I were talking tonight about which would be worse: to go as a victim of a grizzly or of someone like the BTK killer.

May we all die peacefully in our sleep at the very right moment.

[graywarrior]

13. Let me know tomorrow if you lose sleep tonight

I think it may be more honorable to be done in by a bear than by that egotistical BTK lunatic.

[jobycom]

3. Excellent review. Thanks, I was debating that one.

[patrice]

5. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Are there political parallels?

I heard Treadwell interviewed on NPR a few years ago. He told a captivating story about seeing two grizzlies, a male and a female, fight to a draw on a mountain ridge.

[BurtWorm]

9. He was very angry with human society

and with the government in particular. One of his friends reads a letter they got after his death from freeper types saying it served him right and calling him a socialist and Dem. (It's never clear what Treadwell's politics really were, though he was clearly totally behind animal liberation.)

[jim3775]

7. Do you think he set himself and his g/f up to be killed?

I didn’t see it but someone who did told me that this was his suspicion.

[BurtWorm]

11. Could be.

That's a real possibility. Apparently his girlfriend at the time, who was killed with him, thought so.

I'm going to be asking myself that question for days now!

[BurtWorm]

21. After a weekend of thought, I would say he did not mean to kill Amie.

In the audio of the mauling, Timothy pleads with her to run, even as, apparently, he was in the jaws of the animal. But he may have at least subconsciously intended to kill himself. In one of the last scenes he films, he points out that you should always pitch camp in the open--in essence, to highlight the boundary between yourself and the animal. But he boasted of setting up his last camp in the thicket, stressing (in his self-glorifying way) that this was the most dangerous kind of camping in the history of the world.

Incidentally, I'm still haunted by this film two full days after seeing it.

[Tom Kitten]

8. It sounds good

I will take your recommendation (fascinating story plus I am drawn to anything Herzog) but I'm not sure I want to be haunted by something anew these days!

[BurtWorm]

12. I wasn't sure either.

But it was worth it. :thumbsup:

[bridgit]

10. sadly, he was no 'crocodile hunter' either...

personally, i would never have gone into any outback with an attitude such as he'd displayed but that's just me

[BurtWorm]

14. I hope that's a lot more than just you.

And me! (The Aleuts thought he was disrespectful.)

[bridgit]

16. seriously so friend, those are profound terrains...

and imo need be approached with fervent, reverential respect

[mzmolly]

15. Where did you see this BW?

Theatre? Video? Sounds like a great film.

More here:

http://www.grizzlyman.com/news.html

:*

[BurtWorm]

18. A movie theater in New York.

It'll probably be just as compelling on video.

[Blue_In_AK]

17. Alaskans who "truly" know their grizzlies

thought Treadwell was a fool.

[patrice]

19. Maybe he wasn't a fool, just an adrenalin junkie. n/t

[cleofus1]

20. out of respect for the dead

i'll avoid name calling...

but anyone who goes out into the great land and baby talks to bears and gives them cutie names is gonna get himself killed...he got his girlfriend killed and two bears were hunted down and killed by the forest service...
he was not just reckless...he displayed a profound and self destructive ignorance of the wildlife...i feel much sympathy for his girlfriend...she was bamboozled into thinking he knew what he was doing...and it cost her dearly...