Film Illiterate, wherein the proprietor records movies seen, and sporadic progress through assorted lists of the "best". Originally started after regretfully renting something forgettable for the third time. I've forgotten what, but never again! A tedious endeavour since 2005. Hello. 🙂
"I believe the common character of the universe is not harmony, but hostility, chaos and murder," Herzog says, and it's this point-of-view, so sharp a contrast with the flower-child attitude of the film's subject, that makes Grizzly Man so interesting. That subject is Timothy Treadwell, a wildlife activist killed in 2003 by one of the brown bears he had camped near to protect from poachers, and, indeed, most of the film consists of footage shot by Treadwell before his death. In some cases it was significantly earlier -- he had summered there for over a decade.
Herzog initially shows Treadwell as a sympathetic figure, but it doesn't last: he is telling the story of an innocent, cut down in pursuit of a noble cause, but only in the sense that "innocence" is another word for naïveté and delusion. Treadwell does seem to grasp that the bears are dangerous, but believes that he has discovered the secret of safety. He believes his work is important, but he seems distressingly ignorant and unscientific: he's more like a child than a conservationist. When he talks about the bears, it's lovingly, sometimes to the point of absurdity; in one sequence he touches a fresh bear turd, exulting in the fact that "it's still warm", "it was inside of her".
It's ultimately just another entry in Herzog's gallery of dreamers and madmen, and make no mistake: Treadwell shot the footage, but this is Herzog's film. He isn't afraid to put himself or his views into the picture, and he seems almost as mad as Treadwell does. The result is something blackly funny and tragically, touchingly absurd. Is it true? Who knows.