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Grizzly Man Director: Werner Herzog Rated: M Trak Cinema (as part of the European Masters Series) From Thurs 1 Dec 
Esteemed veteran German director Werner Herzog retrospectively documents
the quasi-conservational activities of deceased grizzly Bear enthusiast
Timothy Treadwell. As the film promptly notes, Treadwell and his girlfriend
Amie Huguenard were mortally attacked by a grizzly in 2003 on an annual
season-long linger in Alaska's Katmai National Park. Treadwell had
been conducting such adventures alone for 13 summers, and fortunately
for documentary filmmakers (and cinemagoers) he videoed a large portion
of his later escapades. Herein Herzog has sifted through hundreds
of hours of Treadwell's often remarkable footage and interweaved much
vivid natural scenery and interviews with concerned folks, producing
a literally straightforward but brilliantly effective film. As the film cogently elucidates, Treadwell was no simple ecologist but a former actor deeply estranged by human civilisation. His (quite) overt love of bears and foxes seems to have developed as a remedial antithesis to his disillusionment with humankind. This love led to obsession and thorough envelopment in an illusion of the natural as a realm of infinite beauty, peace, and order, where violence and chaos were exceptional. Hence his bewilderment when he located the remains of animal associates mauled by their own kind, and saw the faunal impacts of low rainfall. Semi-ironically, whilst he has managed to quite lucidly articulate his personal turmoil on camera, he seems to have never been able to understand it himself, immured as he was in his own circumstances. Herzog has managed this film carefully and maintains awareness of his presence throughout with sober but shrewd narration. He does not hesitate to assert his own analysis and opinion of Treadwell and, being the master filmmaker he is, this is done with disciplined reservation and complete avoidance of tension, thus enabling him to be sympathetic, credible and critical all at once and avoid the minimalist timidity and detachment of fly-on-the-wall productions in a meaningful and non-detractive way. In fact Herzog's rather frequent interruption proves elementary to the stability of the film, especially alongside Treadwell's ever-increasing and destabilising hysteria. 'Grizzly Man' is a sublime compound of restrained documentation, sombre analysis, and ecological zealotry.  |
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