Documentaries are a tricky beast. You walk a fine line between boring someone who has no interest in what is happening on screen and cheating the viewer out of the reality of the situation. Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man did a wonderful job of showing the life and tragic death of Timothy Treadwell through his own images.Timothy Treadwell has a presence on screen and an intense love for animals that pervades this film. People watching this might even think that his love for animals is too much. But his passion for his endeavors, the protection of these beautiful creatures, makes him all the more human, despite his own seeming loathing of people and preference to the animal world.
Herzog shows many sides to Treadwell, including snippets of the film that seem like confessions of Treadwell's own fears and insecurities. Treadwell talks in passing about his problems with women in the context of the grizzly world, such openness could be construed as a weakness but I found it reassuring to hear him openly talk about his love and his missed attempts at relationships, it help to actualize him for me.
I found myself drawn into Treadwell's world, more so because I wish that I had something that I cared about as passionately as he did the bears that he studied and lived with for 13 years before his death. We are searching for something in our own lives and some may never find it, but when you do find it, you give yourself completely to it, and in some cases, it can consume you.
The eerie, and some what prophetic, parts of this film come as Treadwell speaks of his love for these bears and how he would "die for them." This happens many times in the footage, and as an audience, knowing what happened to him, it becomes that much more poignant. Treadwell knew the risks he took and in the end, lost his life living as he wanted.
