Review of Grizzly Man (2005) by Robert H — 13 Jan 2010

Footage shot by an amateur bear enthusiast who spent 13 summers living amongst the grizzlies, and got eaten in the end.

There are also interviews with friends, family, and others. Some of those things have a sense of gratuitous description - a helicopter pilot almost seems to relish talking about the "plastic bags" of bits and pieces of the two eaten people that were removed from the site of the devouring and the bear's guts after it was shot, and the coroner goes into vivid detail about the recording of the attack (which is not played in the documentary), in an almost minute-by-minute account and analysis of who screamed what, and was being eaten by the bear at the time.

Aside from those bits, the film shows a strange, strange man, probably somewhere on the autistic spectrum, who is not easy to empathise with. Werner Herzog's commentary adds something valuable in some places, but also has hugely judgemental, biased bits, which detracts almost as much as the insightful bits add in terms of value.