Film review
Top: Timothy Treadwell socializes with a fox in Alaska as a grizzly forages in the background. Middle: Treadwell gives one of his many on-camera soliloquies as a grizzly sneaks up on him. Bottom: Treadwell shown with girlfriend Amie Huguenard. Both were killed and partially eaten by a grizzly in October 2003.
Don't feed the bears
When I saw the preview for "Grizzly Man," I thought of Timothy Treadwell, "What an asshole -- he was better as bear food."
After I saw the documentary yesterday, however, my opinion of him softened a bit, and from the preview I had thought that I might not be able to watch the film, given Treadwell's obvious egomaniacal obnoxiousness, but I found the film to be quite watchable.
Treadwell, who at age 46 with his girlfriend was mauled to death and partially eaten by a grizzly in Alaska in October 2003 after having camped out among the grizzlies for several summers, was a troubled individual, to put it mildly.
After failing to become a successful actor in Hollywood (vanity), he sank into alcoholism (addictive personality), and the only thing that brought him out of his alcoholism, he reports in the extensive footage of him in director Werner Herzog's documentary, was going to the Alaskan wilderness to live among the grizzlies, foxes and other critters.
Maybe he stopped drinking, but Treadwell never left the telltale personality traits of the alcoholic behind, including egomania and paranoia, and I surmise that he was able to quit drinking when he went to Alaska because the adrenaline rushes that he apparently got living dangerously among the grizzlies were a sufficient replacement for alcohol. (And, of course, if people are the main cause of your anxieties and you remove yourself from people, such as in the wilderness of Alaska, your level of anxiety should subside. That said, Treadwell seems at perpetual war against people, even in his isolation.)
Treadwell, with no apparent prior education, training or experience, appointed himself as the protector of Alaska's grizzlies and foxes and other furries, and in the documentary we see Treadwell make constant references to the threat that men pose to these animals in Alaska, but the biggest threat to one of the furries that we actually see in his footage is some rednecky moron who probably voted for George W. Bush throwing some rocks at a grizzly. The rock-thrower is an asswipe, to be sure, but it's not like he posed a real threat to Alaska's grizzly population.
The movie doesn't really go there, but Treadwell is a big ol' blip on my gaydar, and I have to wonder whether a struggle with his sexual orientation was at least partly responsible for his alcoholism.
In one scene he philosophizes that gay men must have it easier than straight men -- after all, he reasons, straight men have to wine and dine women before they get any, whereas gay men can just get it on already. Then he catches himself and remarks that he supposes that gay men must have their problems, too.
Is it usual for straight men to ponder whether or not it's easier to be gay? (And for the record, gay men have just as many, if not more, problems than do straight men; gay men's problems are just of a different nature, for the most part.)
Anyway, the juxtaposition of the beauty of Alaka's wildlife with the smorgasbord of Treadwell's head issues makes for an interesting documentary in which there are some uncomfortable scenes.
At the beginning of the film we are shown an appearance by Treadwell on David Letterman's show in which Letterman jokingly asks Treadwell whether one day we're going to read in a newspaper article that a grizzly has eaten him. Knowing what we know, Letterman's joke is chillingly prescient.
The most uncomfortable scene is the one in which one of Treadwell's former girlfriends receives from a coroner the wristwatch that was retrieved from Treadwell's dismembered arm after the grizzly attack.
The coroner -- who describes Treadwell's and Treadwell's girlfriend's remains with what seems like at least some delight -- is creepy, as are Treadwell's former tree-hugging girlfriend and a tree-hugging friend or two of Treadwell's. (Whenever someone calls me a moonbat, I can think back to Treadwell's associates and say [at least to myself], "No, those are moonbats!")
A videocamera was running while Treadwell was being mauled to death and while his girlfriend, who would suffer the same fate shortly thereafter, was trying to save him, but the lens cap wasn't removed, so there was only audio. We don't hear any of the audio, but director Herzog describes some of it to Treadwell's former girlfriend as he listens to it with headphones.
Herzog -- whose thickly German-accented narration of the film unfortunately reminded me at least a little of Ahhhnuld Schwarzenegger -- tells Treadwell's former girlfriend that she must never listen to the horrific tape and that she must destroy it so that she removes the temptation to ever listen to it. (We don't know what happens to the tape, but I presume that she indeed destroyed it.)
The take-home message of "Grizzly Man," I think -- besides don't feed the bears, of course -- is that we should carefully examine our motives, especially when we insert ourselves into dangerous situations.
Treadwell really wanted to believe, I think -- and I think that his surviving friends want to believe, too -- that he really was in Alaska for the good of the grizzly bears and the foxes and the other critters, but his constant self-centered pronouncements and the apparent lack of any real threat to Alaska's wildlife (Treadwell spent his time in a federal government reserve, for Chrissake) make it pretty clear that he was in Alaska primarily for himself, as a kind of self-therapy.
Had he really been there for the animals, I have to wonder, would he have ended up as bear food?
My grade: A-
10:22:21 AM 
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