Grizzly Man
It’s the age-old story, man loses out on a role in cheers, man goes on drink and drug-fuelled descent, gets clean, reinvents himself as a surfer complete with fake Australian accent, man becomes grizzly bear activist and eventually, man gets eaten by said bears.
The ironically-named hero of director Werner Herzog’s documentary Grizzly Man, Timothy Treadwell, is a fascinating and tragic figure whose desperate need to reinvent himself led him to the plains of Alaska and, eventually, to his and his girlfriend’s untimely death in 2003.
Timothy Treadwell spent 13 summers filming his beloved Alaskan Grizzly bears in a documentary style so dangerous that it defied belief. Treadwell sought to immerse himself in their natural, albeit savage, world that, to him, must have seemed like a heavenly opportunity to escape the numerous disappointments of his life.
A failed actor, Treadwell claims he narrowly missed out on the role of Woody in Cheers, which, his parents understand, was his departure point from a world that consistently deceived and rejected him, one that considered Treadwell a social misfit and dangerous loner.
Treadwell’s motives in decamping to his adopted home of Alaska can only be described as escapist. Herzog himself describes his world-view as tragically “Disneyfied” and totally incapable of supporting reality.
Treadwell’s years of footage is edited and re-packaged as Werner’s own documentary. It comes across as a beautiful, tragic and often hilarious account of a man so disillusioned with day-to-day life that, blind of any sense of reality, he cannot see the danger in front him.
Treadwell’s account of grizzly life is touching but doomed. Giving a nine-foot bears (which have the ability to smell meat from five miles away and run at 40kph) the dubious monikers of “Mr Chocolate” or “Sgt Brown” could only have had one, sad ending.
Indeed, it is commented upon in one interview, given by those who knew Treadwell, that perhaps the bears thought of him as mentally handicapped and only tolerated his presence out of curiosity, it is the closest explanation I can think of as to why he wasn’t dispatched with sooner.
A further tragedy is that Treadwell’s girlfriend was also killed in the attack is something that highlights how dangerously misguided yet enigmatic Treadwell was.
Nature, brutal and beautiful in equal measure dispensed the cruellest of punishments by first bewitching and then betraying Treadwell. Herzog has a memorable comment on how deluded Treadwell was, where he sees understanding, nature in it’s most forgiving, Herzog sees only a bear, looking at Treadwell with the same disinterested, cold eyes one makes at a meal about which you are unsure.
Timothy Treadwell said he would die to protect these bears and he did but, sadly, we know no more about them from his stunning footage than we did before.
Grizzly man is well worth a look, half case-study in madness, half nature documentary, it is a terribly poignant look at a world seen through the eyes of a dreamer that had lethal consequences.
Grizzly Man: Directed by Werner Herzog, is on general release.