Werner Herzog’s “Grizzly Man” is an amazingly rich film, and an indefinably important one for those who have a vested interest in artistic showcases of man’s position in his natural world.
That Herzog, a madman in his own right, would be drawn to the life and times of Timothy Treadwell is hardly surprising, but what did catch me off guard watching the film was how much Herzog, even given the controller that he is, allowed the seams of his staging and the melodrama of his subjects to come across on film.
I don’t really want to dig too deep into the film. Treadwell was a madman, but a beautiful man. And Herzog, a cinematic genius, found a fascination in his fellow filmmaker’s exploits. Hearing Herzog’s view of his basis for nature’s common denominator (chaos) bouncing off of his subject’s basis (balance) was an exercise in exemplary cinema where filmic essays are concerned. But what really bothered me was how out of control the director let his obviously theatrical (in personality) interviewees get.
When the subtitle reads “actor/friend” on the image of one of Treadwell’s pals at Venice Beach, I seemed to think “of course he’s an actor” watching him merely recount the most minimal of circumstances regarding his friend. And let’s not talk about the doctor, who creepily stares at the camera like some Dracula recounting the sounds of Treadwell and his girlfriend’s demise at the hands of a grizzly. Why did that scene dictate such a stagy atmosphere? Ditto the scene with Treadwell’s ex-girlfriend receiving his watch.
Why?
I’m talking very vaguely about all of these qualms, I know, and unless you’ve seen the film you won’t really get what I’m saying. But honestly, I’m surprised Herzog, a filmmaker who is so passionate about his work, seemed so lax in with the interview segments of this otherwise richly conceived portrait of insanity and nature.
Though I did love his sideways indication of Treadwell as a latter day Klaus Kinski, stating during one of Treadwell’s on-camera emotional explosions that he had “seen behavior like this on a film set before.”
It makes me want to go throw in “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” for the hundreth time.