Sunday, April 23, 2006

Bear with me: "Grizzly Man"

This is one of those movies bound to provoke debate. Was Timothy Treadwell a dipsh!t, or merely a dumba$$?

(Also, get a load of this pattern: "Inside Man," "The Weather Man" and now "Grizzly Man." Now accepting nominations for the next installment. "Ladies' Man?" "Repo Man?" "Encino Man?")

As documentaries go, "Grizzly Man" generated a fair amount of buzz due to its wacky subject, the aforementioned Treadwell. For more than a decade, this loopy, floppy-haired dude spent part of each year living among bears in Alaska. Saying he wanted to commune with the animals is an understatement. I'm actually surprised he didn't walk around in a bear suit.

Treadwell achieved some fame for this, but that apparently was lost on the bear that killed him and his girlfriend a few years ago. That led German filmmaker Werner Herzog to get to the bottom of things, seeking out those who knew Treadwell and reviewing hours of footage Treadwell shot while among the bears.

Early in the movie, I thought Herzog was being easy on Treadwell, and it p!ssed me off to see this nutjob get a pass. Fortunately, the director revealed a clearer head, and while Treadwell wanting to be one with the bears is all well and good -- hey, it's your life -- we ultimately realize two things that should make anyone who watches this movie a little upset:

1. Treadwell is a glory hog.
This has nothing to do with him being on Letterman or other national TV. Instead, consider this: The guy had a girlfriend who joined him in bear country, and in 100 hours of video footage, she appears twice. Yeah, twice. More telling, Treadwell always talks to the camera about being alone with the bears, and "I this" and "I that." Um, who's holding the camera, bud?

2. Treadwell is a hypocrite.
This ticked me off even more. We're watching this guy out in nature, raving on and on about loving and protecting the bears. Yet on more than one occasion he disrupts the natural habitat. In other words, he's so fixated on bears that he doesn't much care about upsetting an ecosystem by artificially sending salmon downstream. Forgive me if I forget the specifics here, but that's because I was yelling at the TV, "What a hypocritical a$$face!"

Of course, all of this makes for compelling viewing, and it's easy to watch the countdown to the deaths of Treadwell and his girlfriend. (Her name was Amie Huguenard, by the way.) Herzog's voiceover is often heavy, and not just because of the accent, but in general he does a good job of not glorifying Treadwell. Instead, we see a man who clearly is not well. Sure, no one deserves to get mauled and eaten by a bear. But you keep rolling the dice, Yogi, and it's going to come up snake eyes sooner or later.

1 Comments:

At 8:31 PM, Blogger rumour said...

I look like a grizzly man when I take my shirt off... but I wax regularily now.

 

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