Oddball naturalist Timothy Treadwell, who may have been somewhat mentally unstable, spent 13 summers living in the Alaskan wilderness with grizzly bears and foxes as his main companions. The last five summers, he brought along a video camera and documented his experiences, including his death by grizzly bear attack, and left over 100 hours of footage. This footage was turned into a documentary about Treadwell called "Grizzly Man."

With such a plethora of footage to work with, a director telling Timothy's story could do one of three things. The most obvious would be to create your standard doc, something that might run on The Discovery Channel or Animal Planet which tells his story simply, concisely, and straight-forward. This would be the obvious, safe and boring choice. "Grizzly Man" is not done in this style although it would have been acceptable.

The better choice would be to take this footage, artfully edit it, allow the footage to tell the story in a creative and poetic way, avoiding use of narrators and intrusive information packets. A brilliant director could have created something extraordinary and breath-taking with this footage. Alas, that didn't happen here either.

Instead the worst has happened. A pompous and overblown blowhard of a director has taken the footage and turned it into his own film. The director is perhaps the worst choice for the job, Werner Herzog, perhaps the most arrogant and self-centered director since Otto Preminger. Herzog railroads this story into incomprehensibility. It is a tragedy of modern cinema.

Herzog, with his pretension flag flying at full mast, narrates this film with long, boring, segments being filled with his ridiculous prattling. No less than twice does he offer to contradict Treadwell's on-screen statements with his own boring, windbag philosophizing in the narration. Treadwell may be mentally ill, but he is also peaceful, sweet-natured, caring, spiritual and loving. Herzog is a atheist, a believer in the chaos theory, and an egotist who probably has a copy of Manifest Destiny on a plaque in his office. He is absolutely the utterly, most wrong choice to do this film. Who gave him this opportunity?

The most glaring oversight in the film is Herzog's inability to deliver information that is important to the story. We hear of Timothy's youth (there is a short interview segment with his mother and father). We hear about his years as a young man who dabbled in drugs and alcohol. We also, of course, see the last years of his life, when he lived in nature and, in his off time, went to schools and lectured for free. But one thing that is never explained in the film is how Treadwell began this operation. He was a college dropout and yet there are hints of certain grant money being used to go on his yearly "Expeditions" as he called them. Yet, it is never explained how a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, with no real education in this field, was able to begin going up to the Alaskan wilderness via hydroplane and spend his summer there documenting his life with the grizzly bears. Of all the pieces of information missing in this film, this is the most glaring.

"Grizzly Man" is fascinating because Treadwell is so fascinating. When one is able to disengage from Herzog's narcissistic and nearly useless narration and focus on Treadwell, the film is utterly amazing. It's too bad that one has to do this to enjoy the film though. That's the real tragedy that is exposed here.

Notes:

There is a video tape of Treadwell, and his companion Amie Huguenard's last six minutes of life. This is actually only audio as a lens cap was left on the camera. Herzog listens to this audio, which is possessed by one of Treadwell's ex-girlfriends for some reason, but the audience is never allowed to hear it. It is described for us in detail by a medical examiner. Herzog, the idiot that he is, tells the girlfriend she should destroy the tape. It is one of the most obvious "reverse psychology" ploys ever put in a film. Herzog obviously desperately wants to use the tape but he isn't allowed to.

The film has won several awards including one at Sundance in January 2005 where it premiered. However, it has already been eliminated from consideration for an Oscar.

The film also played at Cannes in 2005. A U.S. theatrical release was begun by Lion's Gate in August of 2005.

Viewed in December of 2005 on a DVD. The DVD also has an hour-long featurette about the scoring of the film.

Report Card

Content: A+

Completeness: C

Cinematography/Lighting: C

Special Effects/Make Up: C

Music: A+