Day 15: Grizzly Man (2005)

An early scene from Werner Herzog's documentary Grizzly Man sees Timothy Treadwell, its subject, smacking a half-grown Alaskan grizzly bear on the nose. Right then, you know there probably won't be a happy ending to be had. I've seen the film before but I wanted to go back to it, possibly because it's the kind of thing that reminds you that no matter how bad it gets, there'll always be somebody in the world more fucked up than you are.

Honestly, I'd always thought of Herzog as pretty fucked up himself - with the best will in the world he tends to show up in my mind as That Director In The Cheerful Sadomasochistic Relationship With Klaus Kinski - but compared to Treadwell he's as sane as a brick, and his thoughtful, kindly narration gives backbone and humanity to a story that almost feels straight out of Aesop's fables.

Before the bears, Treadwell was a jobbing actor and by all accounts something of a restless soul. Friends and acquaintances describe his habit of self-reinvention, as the ordinary boy from a nice middle-class Long Island became a boisterous Australian orphan. He had a tendency to use drugs and alcohol to paper over the cracks, managing this with only moderate success until he narrowly lost out on the role of Woody from Cheers. What followed was not entirely clear but sounded like full-on psychosis, leading him to eventually spend thirteen summers in Alaska's Grizzly Maze, a wilderness whose labyrinth of pathways has been carved out by the bears themselves.

Here, away from humanity, Treadwell was able to carve out the heroic fantasy life he seemed to need, casting himself as the bears' champion even though, by all accounts, numbers were stable and poaching almost nonexistent. We see the footage he films where he speaks to the bears like wayward puppies, and where, when a fly lands on the eye of a recently-deceased fox cub, he chastises the insect for its lack of respect. With his squeaky voice and Prince Valiant haircut, it's impossible not to be reminded of Michael Jackson and the lengths he went to to protect himself from a world that seemed too cruel to tolerate.

Inevitably, something dreadful eventually happens. The exact details remain unknown, but one evening in 2003, Treadwell and his girlfriend Amy were ambushed in their tent by a large male bear. What then transpired could only be guessed at by the state of their remains, and from an audio recording on a video camera whose lens cap had not been removed. Herzog doesn't force the audience to listen, but he listens himself, and his reaction left me very glad of this.

In the end, Herzog decides, what saddens him the most is the utter implacability of nature; he looks into the eyes of the bears Treadwell thought were his friends and sees nothing but cold indifference. I believed him, certainly, but what still haunts me is the sort of distress that could lead a person to effectively estrange himself from his own species to fight for such an unnecessary cause. This is a thought-provoking film, beautiful but terribly bleak, and Herzog brings it to life with the touch of an absolute master.