I happened to love Grizzly Man when I saw it in June of last year. I’m no Herzog fan; in fact (confession time), I’ve never seen one of his films before. That’s right, no Aguirre, no Kaspar Hauser, no Fitzcarraldo. That’s why this joint is called The Pop View and not High Class Art Forum (see my comment here).
The film concerns itself with the eternal argument of nature versus civilization. Is nature pure and good? Or is it harsh and cruel? Timothy Treadwell, the subject of the documentary, clearly believed that nature was better than civilization. He felt that the bears were his friends and that he could strive to be one with them. Werner Herzog clearly falls into the latter camp. He feels that nature is cruel by its nature and is, at best, indifferent to us.
The movie comes out on DVD this week. Christopher Orr recently reviewed the movie in The New Republic (sub. req.); he feels that in the philosophical conflict between Treadwell and Herzog, Treadwell comes out on top.
For example, Orr makes this point:
“[Herzog] includes interviews with a few experts (a biologist, a Native American curator) who argue that it’s not possible to cross the line between man and nature and live among wild grizzlies. But Herzog and his experts seem to miss the most relevant fact: Treadwell did exactly that, for large chunks of 13 years. What made him a remarkable figure is not the one day when he was attacked by a bear, but the many hundreds of days when he wasn’t.”
Certainly, there are people who have lived in the wild with animals — Jane Goodall, for example — but no responsible expert would argue that wild animals are anything other than wild. If you watch yourself, you could live with them. But they have their own rules. They certainly aren’t, as Treadwell felt, your friends.
Orr writes: “While [Treadwell's girlfriend Amie] Huguenard’s killing was a tragedy, it is not so clear that Treadwell’s was. This is the way he wanted to die, in the wild with his beloved grizzlies.” Of course, Treadwell got her killed. It’s very clear that Treadwell died because he chose to alter his pattern. He stayed past the normal point he departed during the summer. He went into a dangerous area. In the end, he seemed to go out of his way to risk his life and he risked Huguenard’s as well.
There is a scene where Herzog listens to the attack that killed Treadwell and Huguenard (a camera was left running). He listens to the audio with headphones and then tells Jewel Palovak, a close colleague and former girlfriend of Treadwell, that she should never listen to it, that she should destroy it. Orr states that the point of this scene is that Herzog “does not want Jewel (or us) to share his pitiless vision of the universe, whether because he himself has doubts or because he thinks a comforting lie is preferable to the horrible truth. He is an anti-evangelist for his own nihilism.”
Orr then ends this way:
It’s not quite an explicit philosophical surrender for Herzog. But it is a recognition that, the recklessness of his life and violence of his death notwithstanding, Timothy Treadwell had something to teach us about man’s ability to coexist with nature. And regardless of what he says, Werner Herzog seems to have learned it.
But what is it that Treadwell teaches us? Orr says the debate is “between Treadwell’s heedless conviction and Herzog’s rationalist cynicism…” or “…between delirious belief and cultivated nihilism.” He says that what “Treadwell was seeking was transcendence, a chance to touch something purer, simpler, more divine.” What did Treadwell specifically do to help his bears? He lived with them and then gave talks about how wonderful they are. What concrete actions did he take that left the bears better off than they would have been otherwise? It’s not clear that there is anything. His relationship with the bears seems to have been wonderful for him, but doesn’t seem to have done anything for the bears.
In some ways, the whole thing reminds me of the way that American Indians have been portrayed in the movies over the years. It used to be that Injuns were savages that needed to be wiped out. Then, the Native Americans were a noble people, better than the so-called “civilized” white man. Truth is, they’re people too, full of the same predilection for good and evil. We can raise animals up on a pedestal or shoot them down, but they’re living things, in the end, and therefore prone to the same pendulum of behavior that we all are.
P.S. You may also enjoy this excellent parody.