Review of Grizzly Man (2005) by Jean-Francois V — 19 Oct 2008

I hadn't heard of Timothy Treadwell before I watched this doc, but this is such a well made, well rounded portrait of a truly unique person, that by the end I felt like I had known him for much longer than 100 minutes.

The doc's about a guy who, in the midst of depression and alcoholism, decides that every summer he will live in the Alaskan peninsula among wild grizzly bears in order to protect them from poachers. What the film points out, which obviously didn't occur to Treadwell, is that by spending all that time among the bears he's actually hurting them more than anything, because the more used to humans they get, the less wary they'll be when poachers do come calling.

There's no questioning Treadwell's love for the wild and the bears, but he consistently makes odd statements about being 'one of them' and goes off on a few tangents of rage which show him to be a somewhat unstable person.

Werner Herzog, the greatest documentary filmmaker in the world, narrates the film and uses pieces of Treadwell's own 100+ hours of footage from his 13 summers with the Grizzly's.

As fascinating as the film and Treadwell's footage is, it's also immensely disturbing and unsettling, particularly the parts that refer to the scene of and events surrounding the attack by the bear who tore apart and just about completely ate Treadwell and his girlfriend at the end of their 13th summer.

There's a lot of quiet beauty in the film also though. And if nothing else it should serve as a reminder to everyone that bears are predators and deadly and should just be left alone.