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The biggest flaw in Werner Herzog’s 2005 amazing cult documentary Grizzly Man is the oppressively strong point of view the director brought to the story of Timothy Treadwell’s life. Upon, say, one’s ninth viewing, it’s almost impossible not to get frustrated when Herzog mentions the “over one hundred hours of footage” shot by Timothy over thirteen summers with the bears, when we only got to see the hour or so Herzog chose to show us. And on or around the fifteenth viewing, one gets fed up with Herzog’s strong judgments of Treadwell’s life and more than a little suspicious of his editing. The facts of Treadwell’s death are so unambiguously horrible that it would have been impossible not to start there and work backwards. But wouldn’t any person spending months completely alone in the wilderness with nobody to talk to but a fox and a video camera end up with at least some crazy person videoblogs? Grizzly Man fans have some answers, or at least more footage, to look forward to, in the form of The Grizzly Man Diaries, an 8-part “prequel” to Grizzly Man that will air on Animal Planet starting August 22:
It will draw upon the hundreds of hours of archived footage, private pages from his diaries and more than 10,000 still photographs, ultimately telling the story he truly wanted to before his untimely death from the very creatures he loved so deeply.
The Grizzly Man Diaries, not to be confused with a similarly-titled Discovery Channel special from before Treadwell’s death, is from the producers of both Grizzly Man and Werner Herzog’s latest film, Encounters At The End Of The World, but no Herzog connection is mentioned in the press release. Which is fine, because we’ve already heard from him.
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“And on or around the fifteenth viewing, one gets fed up with Herzog’s strong judgments of Treadwell’s life and more than a little suspicious of his editing.”
lindsay obviously understands nothing about either the nature of documentary filmmaking or the cinema of werner herzog.
No it was very clear from the beginning that this was an unusual documentary in that Herzog made a film about his reaction to Treadwell’s life more than anything else. It was Herzog nature but Lindsay is making the point that Treadwell’s work and experience took a backseat to what Herzog felt about this guy. I do agree with Herzog, that Treadwell was pushing it and eventually became so neurotic and ‘outsidery’ that his own views of what nature is and how it works eventually became unimportant when it came to the survival of his bears.
One part I absolutely hated about Herzog is when he listens to the attack and death and then tells the friend of Treadwell to destroy it. He didn’t tell her to before he listened to it of course..but afterwards, as if the rest of the world nor her should be able to have this as evidence or a reminder. It was definitely not part of the documentary code but rather selfish and to no purpose. That’s when I stopped listening to the voiceovers.