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Grizzly Man
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Genre | Documentary |
Format | Multiple Formats, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen |
Contributor | Timothy Treadwell, Werner Herzog |
Language | English |
Runtime | 1 hour and 44 minutes |
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Product Description
In this mesmerizing new film, acclaimed director Werner Herzog explores the life and death of amateur grizzly bear expert and wildlife preservationist Timothy Treadwell, who lived unarmed among grizzlies for 13 summers.
Product details
- Aspect Ratio : 1.78:1
- Is Discontinued By Manufacturer : No
- MPAA rating : R (Restricted)
- Product Dimensions : 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 0.01 ounces
- Audio Description: : English
- Item model number : 31398186366
- Director : Werner Herzog
- Media Format : Multiple Formats, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
- Run time : 1 hour and 44 minutes
- Release date : December 26, 2005
- Actors : Timothy Treadwell
- Subtitles: : Spanish
- Language : Unqualified, English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround)
- Studio : Lionsgate
- ASIN : B000BMY2NS
- Country of Origin : USA
- Number of discs : 1
- Best Sellers Rank: #29,715 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #599 in Documentary (Movies & TV)
- Customer Reviews:
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Timothy Treadwell left a world in which he could not function most likely due to untreated Bipolar Disorder, and for 13 summers went to the Alaskan peninsula where a large area of land has been set aside as refuge for Grizzlies, and in violation of the Park Service and other governmental authorities, not to mention common sense, set himself up as a "protector" of bears who had no need of either a "kind warrior," to "serve them", nor a "samurai" to "challenge them." For the last five years he had a video camera with him, with which he carefully crafted his image as the "only protector" these bears had, a man willing to live and die for them, a scientist, a naturalist (despite an appalling ignorance and complete lack of even the most rudimentary collecting of data or preparatory research). While he captured some of the most beautiful and unstudied footage of the grizzlies ever filmed, as the years passed the camera increasingly became a confessional medium, and in evermore disturbing monologues on everything from his failure with women (despite his self-professed sexual prowess), to his extraordinary courage in the face of overwhelming odds and dangers, constantly describing himself as the bravest human being on the planet, the only one who has successfully won the respect of the grizzlies and therefore survived, "all alone," the most "dangerous place on the planet, the Grizzly Maze," we watch the intensity of his delusions and paranoia growing. When he notices a smiley face drawn on a rock, one's first thought is that someone who has heard of him is saying "hi," but this little face on a rock on the beach is seen by him as a cleverly backwards, upside-down threat against his life. His grandiosity is, as Herzog says, incandescent; he burns in his madness, something I do not find funny, but frightening. As apparently the real victim of this tragedy, Amie Huguenard, did too, stating that he seemed "hell-bent on destruction." Herzog's question seems to be, "Where does madness end and transcendence begin?" Only in Treadwell's gorgeous footage does any answer seem to lie.
Treadwell's greatest need and gravest error of judgment is revealed in the way he anthropomorphized these wild creatures, at times to a truly astonishing degree, describing the bears, foxes, bees, and even flies in entirely human terms, projecting upon them his own needs and emotions. Giving 12-ft tall grizzlies such petting-zoo names as "Mr. Chocolate" and "STabitha," and naming a fox after himself, so disconnected from reality is he that he genuinely believes they are his friends, believe him to be theirs; is entirely certain that they love him and know he loves them (something he tells them constantly, often in great fits of sobbing).
But what fascinates most is how skewed a vision of the natural world he and Herzog share--Treadwell sees the bears' indifference to his presence as affectionate acceptance and their occasional hostility to him as a deliberate challenge that must be met with strength so that they will respect him, while Herzog just as readily ascribes human terms to the same behaviors ("boredom" and "cruelty"). The only difference is that Treadwell bathes the natural world in a rosy-glassed romantic light, while Herzog sees only "chaos, destruction, and murder." When he sees the footage of the very old and desperately starving bear that is believed to have attacked Treadwell and Ms. Huguenard, he refers to him as a "murderer," a human term implying deliberation and formed intent. As the film progresses, Herzog is as self-revelatory as Treadwell, and we end up with portraits of two megalomaniacs, each making films more about themselves than anything else. Treadwell is the center of his film, not the bears, just as Herzog increasingly becomes the central character of his "documentary." As the camera was running, lens cap on, there is an audio track of the entire attack, and he listens to it under headphones (theretofore only heard for necessary reasons by the coroner) and while I don`t feel it should have been played for us, it is odd that when the tape is played, it is Herzog we are watching as he listens privately while Treadwell's oldest friend watches him shake, clearly deeply disturbed by what he hears. He then tells her that she should destroy the tape, never listen to it, and it while this is sound advice, it seems somehow inappropriate that he should have, through the making of this film, become the most important witness to this event, and the one to decide how those closest to his subject should handle such matters. As Herzog enters more deeply Treadwell's world, he seems more and more inclined to the role of keeper of the keys, rather than filmmaker.
In a disconcerting segment, Herzog follows the graphic description of the cleanup of the bodies of the two humans from inside the bear which ate them with Treadwell's footage of an extraordinarily ferocious fight between two males, so that we cannot help but imagine the attack on two small people as we watch these enormous bears in full battle mode. The scene becomes more surreal as afterwards, Treadwell enters the frame to both talk to us about the intensity of the fight, then to have a relaxed, on-camera chat with the losing bear, even reassuring the vanquished giant that he, Timothy, has no designs on the female in question. This never strikes him as absurd, nor does he see the bear as oblivious to his words of wisdom. Having failed with humans, he insists that the bears stand in as companions, the foxes as playmates. Deliberately camping next to two fox dens, he finds that they abide his presence, even allowing him to pet and play with them, and he calls them "sweet" when they permit this. But the loving taping of, and baby-talking to, a fox kit who has grabbed his baseball cap to play with, turns ugly when the kit runs off to its den with this "vital" belonging, while Treadwell gives chase, yelling, swearing at, and threatening the kit in frustrated rage. Suddenly the good baby is a bad one, and nowhere in the scene is there any indication that Treadwell understands that foxes are not humans (or even little dogs) biddable to his command. Despite his claim of being out there to "study" the animals, he clearly knows nothing about them, either of their behavior, or even that fox babies are not called "pups," but rather "kits."
He weeps over a kit who has been killed by wolves (he thinks), and describes the wolves as celebratory in their kill, and what is clearest is his inability to see that death is as much a part of nature as is life, that animals do not hold celebrations when they kill either to eat, to ensure procreation, to hold their own territory against intruders. And neither does Herzog see this as balance, but as horror. Each is entirely projecting his own prejudices on what is simply the emotionless cycles of nature, a common problem with megalomaniacs, who genuinely lose it when faced with proof that they are not omnipotent; the Marquis de Sade also hated Nature, "that passionless spectator that can bear everything," hence both Treadwell on his tapes, and Herzog in "Burden of Dreams," both expressing the need to "conquer" nature. This problem is seen most clearly when Treadwell screams into the camera that it MUST rain, begging the gods to send rain because "Tabitha is eating her babies!" That animals sometimes die, sometimes kill one another, seems to be news to Treadwell. One wonders where he thought hamburgers came from.
The one voice of quiet sanity comes from the single Aleut that Herzog interviewed (too briefly), who explained what respect for bears is in the Native American view, that it means understanding who people are, who the bears are, and not impinging on their territory or trying to "be" one. In his opinion, Treadwell's actions were the opposite of "protective," were in fact disrespectful and ultimately dangerous to the bears, as a bear who is used to people is in danger of getting hurt or killed. The Indian vision of Nature has nothing to do with Treadwell's pretty illusions or with Herzog`s notions of hostility, but rather with everything holding its place, fulfilling its purpose--all functioning without any unnecessary interference from humans. The People have always taken only what was needed; to kill even one creature more than necessary is criminal; even Treadwell's attempt to influence the salmon run so that "his" bears can eat would be considered deeply inappropriate. True harmony can only occur when humans maintain a very light touch. Treadwell's discovery of what he thinks is a dead bee (ignorance about what he calls the "pollen thing" on full display), his rage at a fly who is trying to do its job laying eggs on the dead fox kit in order to recycle it back to the Earth is not, as he seemed to think, an evil disruption of perfection, but rather an illustration of it. Yet he swore at the fly as though it's landing on the kit's body was a personal insult directed at him, "Don't do that in front of me."
Yet, even with all of this to shake one's head at, what Herzog admires is indeed admirable: Timothy Treadwell's unique footage and his fearless self-revelation. The beauty of the wild is something Herzog has filmed repeatedly, nor has he ever attempted to pass himself off as anything but a madman. His rants in "Burden of Dreams" are every bit as uninhibited as Treadwell's rants against the evils of everything from flies to the Park Service. It is a great act of courage to bare one's soul before the world, and both of these men have done that. And it is a gift to be able to do what Herzog has done with this film: he has elevated one man's corkscrewed vision of the world and distilled it to its poetic core, even managing to imbue a cast of oddballs and outcasts with a measure of dignity. Where others see weirdoes and misfits, Herzog has always seen idiosyncricity of character and has honored it as illustrative of the range of humanity. A less judgmental man never held a camera. And clearly, despite their different points of view, Herzog empathizes with Treadwell's enormous struggle to understand and subdue his demons. Perhaps if Timothy Treadwell had lived, he would have found some way to harness them as Herzog has his, and become a fellow visionary, rather than merely a fellow madman.
And speaking of visionaries, let us not forget the exceptional score by genius Richard Thompson, whose guitar speaks to us as clearly and movingly as do Treadwell's images. Through collective improvisation Thompson and several other musicians, with producer Henry Kaiser at the helm and Herzog in the room, created a score that is minimalist yet powerful, authoritative yet playful. On the DVD there is an hour-long documentation of the sessions, called "In the Edges," appropriately enough, as that's where Thompson, Herzog, and during his lifetime, Tim Treadwell, have always lived.
It's very easy to condemn Timothy Treadwell, and from the advertising clips of this video, I figured I would hate the man who appeared foolish, and yet I felt that there was something in his life that was worth finding more about. I admit to being prejudiced against his feminine voice, and his baby talk ("Over there is Mr. Chocolate...hi, Mr. Chocolate", and so on), and he also seemed deranged in is self-aggrandizement. But soon enough, I got over that.
Upon seeing this film, I do not condemn him at all. Yes, certainly, those bears that he lived amongst were already protected, he wasn't helping them at all, and yet it isn't fair to say that he wasn't doing any good for wild animal preservation efforts world wide. After all, he did have that Grizzly foundation, and he was a welcome guest at schools. He must have had some impact on "the movement" to protect certain wild things (whether people agree with the value of that or not is a different story. The point is that he believed in it, and I believe he ultimately did do some good in that realm. I, myself, had never seen a grizzly bear except maybe some photos or sculptures (the California Capitol building in Sacramento is loaded with grizzly bear motif carvings), not even in a zoo, and yet, thanks to Timothy Treadwell's hundreds of hours of footage and Werner Herzog's compilation, editing, and addition of other footage has made it so that anyone watching this movie will really get an eyeful of grizzlies in something close to their natural habitat in Alaska.
Treadwell was certainly always aware of the danger of being amongst the bears, he talked about it in his films almost constantly and also showed some scary moments that he had been able to back out of or gently escape from. So it wasn't that he was stupid or unaware. Also, while he did end up being eaten by one of the bears, it ought to be appreciated as phenomenally remarkable that prior to that end, he had successfully lived thirteen summers with them! That is not an achievement to be taken lightly, in my opinion.
I would have assumed that grizzlies were so dangerous that if you were anywhere near them at all, you would end up being eaten alive. Ipso-facto--grizzly bear = death to a human. But that ended up not being true, at least when it came to Timothy Treadwell, who, as I said, successfully lived with them for thirteen summers. How was he able to do that? Was he really, truly, a "Grizzly Bear Whisperer" (as he seemed to think he was), or are grizzlies not really as dangerous as they are made out to be? I think Timothy proved that humans actually could live among them safely (for a while, anyway!) if they kept to certain behavioral bounds, which he must have done, himself. I don't doubt that if he acted or operated differently, then he could have been killed by the first bear he ever saw the first time he ever set foot into that habitat. But somehow that didn't happen.
As his success with the bears continued summer after summer, I could imagine that he would develop the attitude that he had somehow been accepted by the bears, as that was his actual evidence. It makes me think of a man in the news a few months ago who had a rescued Pit Bull dog as a pet. The dog was a sweetheart, very affectionate, and the man and dog slept cuddling in the same bed for months. Very cute. But then one morning, the man's wife awoke to see her dead husband's face chewed off, having been suddenly attacked in the night by beloved Pit Bull. It seems that you can never really determine the safety or danger of an animal until either it lives to an old age without incident and then dies, or it kills you first!
My guess is that to whatever it is that operates within the mind and heart of bears, Treadwell appeared to them as something that just did not quite compute. He was an oddity, so that while they may be interested in eating him, they thought it might be better to simply not mess with him. As long as they had plenty of food that they were already familiar with, it might not be worth their while to attempt to tackle this oddball one. Perhaps their palates had not yet developed a taste for this weird creature that roamed around on two legs, nor had they known yet how easily conquered a creature like that really was.
It was fascinating to see (and frightening to watch) the two male grizzlies battling it out over the female bear. Despite how vicious it seemed, once it was over, it was clear that each bear had operated within a system of restraint. It really was more like a wrestling match instead a battle to the death. I think the bears were taking it up close to the limit of death, as if to say "I could kill you now if you don't back down", but their intention was not to go all the way if it wasn't necessary to do that in order to win the contest. So they're not just cold-blooded killers; their rituals and their feeding habits have a certain intelligence and system behind them. Timothy Treadwell was something that did not really fit into that system, and that is probably what kept him alive so long, along with whatever cautions and restraints he had put forth.
SPOILER FOLLOWS HERE: After all, it was a breaking of his normal pattern that seemed to get him killed; his coming back after it had been high time to leave, after the fight at the airline counter over the validity of his ticket made him get mad and take his girlfriend with him back to the Grizzly Maze (why she went along with all this is a mystery, but beyond my analysis). Unfortunately, though, by now the bears who "knew" him were hibernating in their caves and the food supply was so low that that a new bear, migrating into the territory, very hungry, was seen desperately diving down to the bottom of the river with hopes of catching dead fish carcasses for food, that made Treadwell and his girlfriend vulnerable like they had never been before. With there being no other food around, the stranger, the very hungry bear, had no restraint and that was the end of the two humans.
The same sort of "violating the season" thing led to Christopher McCandless ("Into The Wild") dying in Alaska. He had waited too long to leave (in his case, being overcome by the arrival of spring) and thus felt trapped by the raging river that he could not cross to continue on his trek back out of Alaska. He decided to stay put and wait for winter to come to freeze up the river again so that he could cross it, but there in the fields where he decided to stay, he ate toxic plants that looked like the safe plants he had been eating all along. END OF SPOILER
The ultimate ending that had long been presumed for Treadwell eventually happened to him, but that should not obliterate the wonder of his success previously, nor does it diminish the value to us of the footage he filmed of these bears and thus generate the appreciation of this movie for its beauties, wonder, and exploration into the psychology of a person undergoing a unique and fascinating experience. It doesn't matter to me whether he was insane or not (who am I to judge?), I can only say that he marched to a different drummer and his obsessions led to some knowledge and experience that I found beneficial for me to see.
The film actually made me come to like Treadwell and feel that I could partly understand him. Instead of thinking that he was off his rocker, I feel that he was amazing to have been so relentless in following his dreams. And I don't buy the argument that he brought harm to the bears due to his killer bear being put down. We had already learned that the numbers of the bears have to be harvested from time to time or else they will be too numerous for their habitat and then some of them would starve. This particular bear who fed his desperate hunger on the bodies of Treadwell and his girlfriend might very well have starved to death if he hadn't had that meal. So like the Chinese tale of "was it a good thing or a bad thing" that happened, I can only be respectful of the fact that because of Treadwell (and Herzog) we have this fascinating film.
Where I really began to like Treadwell was with his scenes with the foxes. Those were wild animals, too, and yet they got so they would lie with him and allow him to pet them for hours, which they seemed to enjoy (you can see how due to their curiosity and their ready acceptance of humans that the "dog" would be one of the first animals to be domesticated!). He certainly must have had something that connected in a positive way with these animals. His absolute love for them and appreciation of their beauty and of their ways is contagious and his adventures made it so that we could see and appreciate that, too. Perhaps he had actually achieved something with the grizzlies. Herzog didn't seem to think so, but I'm not so sure.
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La sua visione della natura era mistica, e da mistico si illuse di poter entrare a farne parte.
Dimentico delle più elementari cautele imposte per campeggiare in quelle terre pericolose, si pose a baluardo contro le minacce vere o presunte tali, e fece più male che bene: abituando gli orsi alla presenza umana, li privò dell'atavico timore dell'uomo... e non si rese conto di essere entrato nella catena alimentare. Pagò con la vita la propria leggerezza.
Un documentario bellissimo, e la regia imparziale di Herzog ci permette di giudicare l'uomo e la sua vicenda senza pregiudizi.
Immagini sorprendenti e a volte raccapriccianti nella loro semplice estrema pericolosità.
The film itself is a tale of two ideologies. On the one hand, we have Timothy Treadwell, who basically believed that nature was fundamentally benevolent. What we see of Treadwell is primarily footage of himself in front of the camera describing how it is his duty to protect the bears and look after them. It is certainly true that he was well aware of the dangerous situation he placed himself in, but perhaps his devotion to the subject blinded him from seeing that there is a great tangible distance between humans and bears. In doing so he crosses an invisible line, and gets frighteningly close to these wild animals, arguably putting them in as much danger as he does himself.
On the other hand, we have Herzog, who is the great Germanic nihilist. He narrates the film beautifully, often disagreeing with Treadwell's viewpoint, but crucially he never mocks, derides or castigates Treadwell for what he does. Interspersed within Treadwell's footage is several interviews with those who knew him best. The pain is clearly still evident for several of them, with one friend remarking "Timmy doesn't feel dead."
There are moments throughout which are ridiculous, some of which are laugh out loud funny, and some which are highly moving and sad. We watch these majestic creatures in their natural habitat, amid some awe-inspiring natural backdrop, and sympathise to some extent with Treadwell, who clearly died doing what he loved, and doing what he felt was a little bit of good in this sadistic and greedy world of ours.
From a production point of view, the film looks and sounds majestic. Richard Thompson's guitar heavy soundtrack is highly reminiscent of Brokeback Mountain, and tugs at the heartstrings throughout, as do the sweeping shots of the Alaskan wilderness in which Treadwell perished.
Ultimately, this is a deeply engrossing look at obsessive behaviour gone awry, but it is a beautiful and thought-provoking film which is undoubtedly one of the best documentaries I have ever seen.
9.5/10
"Haz"
Nach Cobra Verde drehte er nur noch wenige Spielfilme, jedoch sehr viele Dokumentarfilme. Der bekannteste davon ist vielleicht "Mein liebster Feind", der über das schwierige Regisseur-Darsteller-Verhältnis zwischen ihm und Klaus Kinski berichtet.
Aber auch "Gasherbrum - der leuchtende Berg", der von der Doppel-8000er-Besteigung von Reinhold Messner und Hans Kammerlander handelt, wurde hoch gelobt.
Interessanterweise verweigert sich Herzog der konventionellen Anschauungsweise, dass in den Dokumentationen Kameras Authentizität reproduzieren könnten. Deshalb sind seine dokumentarischen Arbeiten bewusst mit der eigenen Perspektive auf den Gegenstand bezogen. Somit wird Herzogs Perspektive und auch Ansicht Teil der gezeigten Bildes.
"Grizzly Man" aus dem Jahr 2005 ist eine Dokumentation über den Tierschützer Timothy Treadwell, der dreizehn Jahre lang jeden Sommer mit Grizzlybären in Alaska zusammen lebte. Anfang Oktober 2003 wurde Treadwell und seine Freundin Amie Huguenard, die ihn die letzten beiden Male begleitete, von einem hungrigen Bären angegriffen und getötet.
Seine Überzeugung war, dass er die Tiere persönlich schützen müsse. Er lernte Stück für Stück die Verhaltensweisen, Gesten und Gepflogenheiten der braunen Riesen und konnte mehr und mehr in unmittelbarer Nähe mit einem der gefährlichsten Raubtiere der Welt zusammen leben. Waffen oder andere Schutzmaßnahmen wie Pfefferspray lehnte er ab. Sein ständiger Begleiter war die Video-Kamera, damit hielt er grandiose Naturaufnahmen der Tiere im Katmai-Nationalpark in Alaska fest.
Er gründete 1991 die Organisation Grizzly People, die sich für den Schutz der Grizzlybären und die Erhaltung ihres natürlichen Lebensraumes einsetzt. Sein Buch "Among Grizzlies" erschien 1997. Im Winter jobbte er meistens als Kellner in Kalifornien. Es gelang ihm noch zu Lebzeiten eine breitere Öffentlichkeit für sein Anliegen aufmerksam zu machen.
Doch er hatte auch zahlreiche Kritiker, die sein Tun und seine Einstellung gegenüber den Bären kritischer und als sehr gefährlich beurteilten. Selbst von Tierschützern wurde bemerkt, dass Treatwell unsichtbare Grenzen zwischen Mensch und Tier ignorierte und somit grundlegende Regeln im Umgang mit Raubtieren absichtlich brach.
Zu dieser Einschätzung tendiert auch Werner Herzog in seinen Kommentaren. Nichtsdestotrotz ist "Grizzly Man" beeindruckend schön mit seinen Naturaufnahmen und mit Mensch und Tier als Freund. Selbst wenn es eine 13jahre andauernde Illusion gewesen sein sollte. Er gab jedem Tier einen Namen und ständige Begleiter waren eine Fuchsfamilie, neben denen er oft am Abend einschlief und am Morgen aufwachte.
"Grizzly Man" bekam großartige Kritiken und so verwundert es auch nicht, dass dieser ungewöhnliche Dokumentarfilm nicht nur zahlreiche Preise gewinnen konnte, sondern auf vielen Bestenlisten über Filme des letzten Jahrzehnts ziemlich oben zu finden war.