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GRIZZLY MAN (2005)
I can't wait for Shark Man, and Anaconda Man Of all the sad stories we've seen in documentaries, surely that of Timothy Treadwell must have been the hardest to tell with a straight face. It's a good thing that making this movie wasn't my job, because there would've been a lot more scenes where somebody dressed as Groucho Marx looked at the camera and said "I've heard of being consumed by your obsessions, but this is ridiculous!" If you haven't heard of Treadwell, his fate might ring a bell. He's the guy who went up to Alaska every summer, for thirteen summers, to go live with the grizzlies, and on the fourteenth summer...guess what. You might wonder, what the hell was he thinking? This is the big question the movie tries to answer. Treadwell makes grandiose and vague claims of protecting the bears, but from what, and how? They're on a reserve and thus fairly well protected, and the one time Treadwell actually encounters poachers (they don't even seem to be armed, and would sooner chase a curious bear off than shoot it) all he does is hide behind a tree. A bear biologist informs us that the grizzly population in Alaska is actually quite stable, and considering Treadwell's own footage of mating-rights battles and the aftermath of cannibalism, it looks like these bears need more protection from each other than from people. The irony of Treadwell's intention is twofold; the bear that ate him was killed for it, and as one bear dude helpfully points out, making the bears acclimated to human contact does them no favors (would that bear have been so curious about the "poachers" otherwise?). That he loved bears is obvious; but when somebody goes to live with them and gets eaten for his trouble, one has to ask just how educated that person was on the subject. The footage shot by Treadwell that was included in Grizzly Man is often pretty, funny, and suspenseful, but for whatever reason barely anything is included that teaches the average person more about bears than they're already able to figure out by the fact that they're big and they have sharp teeth. Perhaps unfairly, that causes one to question just how much Treadwell knew about bears in the first place, making him seem little more than an enthusiastic amateur. If there were bear cubs, one can only imagine him leaping at every opportunity between them and their mothers. We learn more of Treadwell though his parents, friends, and his own rambling monologues, which he usually delivers as if he were talking to grade-school children (which he often is, giving presentations at schools when it's not summer) except for a few more colourful ramblings about his own seemingly confused sexuality and how The Man's getting him down. His enthusiasm comes across well, though it's left up to our imagination just how he managed to talk his girlfriend, who didn't like bears, to go up to Alaska to live with the bears that last summer. We learn little about her, as her family declined to participate in the documentary (probably still pretty pissed) and Treadwell vigilantly kept her out of the frame when shooting - we even see one bit where he pontificates on the subject of being so completely alone in the great northern vastness, even though we know he isn't. She got eaten too, and we are told by a loopy-seeming coroner (if this were a fictitious character, you just know he'd be one of those coroners who's always eating a sandwich with bits of onion and mustard always dripping out of it) just what happened, as suggested by the remains and (shudder) the video camera which recorded the audio of their deaths in its entirety. We don't get to hear that audio, and I can't help but feel that was the right decision from director Werner Herzog, partly because of the kind of impact that would have on Treadwell's loved ones, and partly how actually hearing those two die in agony and terror would not likely have positively enhanced the viewing experience; what would be the point? Not to bring up a completely fictitious parallel, but...if there were a recording of the murder of Kitty Genovese, I could understand why that would get screentime. There'd be a point to that - many people stood by, watched it happen and did nothing to help, and it might be illuminating for many to see just what people were able to remain apathetic through. This...no, I can't think of any ways hearing the tape would've served much of a purpose beyond a lurid thrill. But there has been some controversy since this film's release about whether Treadwell told her to flee, or told her to fight the bear; the movie one-sidedly states that he told her to flee. Either way, she stayed and fought, and died for it. (not that she would likely have lasted long had she fled) Grizzy Man has lots of extremely dry, gallows humor, often in the form of Treadwell's unintended foretelling of his own future, and there is a funny scene where he guests on Letterman and is immediately asked about the possibility of being eaten by a bear, a question I'm sure he got all the time. Having seen the movie, I think I can say I understand the guy a little better now, but I still think he was a nut. If there's any lesson that can be taken out of this, it is one that most of us understood pretty well going in; as a friend of mine said, "It's like dude, stop trying to live with bears." This guy stopped. That's for damn sure. (c) Brian J. 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