Dir. Werner Herzog, US, 2005, 103 mins
Cast: Werner Herzog (narrator), Timothy Treadwell
With the staggering success of March of the Penguins, the nature documentary has proved to be an unexpected money-spinner of late, although it’s unlikely that Werner Herzog’s remarkable film concerning grizzly bears will offer much to rival the financial returns of those much-loved penguins. The narration (performed by Herzog himself) offers little of the heartfelt musings over the quiet dignity of the animals that one would come to expect from the genre. While the footage of the grizzlies themselves, though spectacular, is kept to an unanticipated minimum.
Herzog is far more concerned with the subject of Timothy Treadwell, a grizzly bear enthusiast who provides the focus of the film. Having spent years filming these animals in the wild, Treadwell, along with his partner Amie Huguenard, was mauled to death in October 2003 on a filming expedition in Alaska. Comprised mostly of footage shot by Treadwell, Herzog has assembled an astonishingly complex rumination on obsession, psychosis and the process of filmmaking itself. Treadwell proves an increasingly thorny character as the film progresses, while first appearing as an amiable eccentric with a fanatical commitment to the plight of the grizzlies, it soon becomes apparent that his love for the animals is intrinsically linked to a rejection of his own troubled personal life (plagued with alcoholism and a failed acting career), and a general desire to flee the unnecessary complexities of human interaction. Initially comic, his persistent declarations of love for the animals, to which he gives childlike names such as Sgt Brown or Mr Chocolate, become increasingly cheerless as his numerous neuroses surface and his confessional monologues to the camera take on a darker edge. As such, Treadwell is classic Herzog, his fanaticism and unhealthy tendency toward megalomania recalling the fiery performances of Klaus Kinski in Fitzcarraldo (1982) and various other Herzog pictures. Indeed, it often seems as though Treadwell is consciously playing a role he has written for himself, one designed to mask his own feelings of inadequacy in an often laboured act of deliberate self-righteousness and emotional displacement.
Treadwell’s battle to protect the grizzlies was the source of much controversy. Certain environmentalists, who felt he was there for personal gain rather than the sake of the animals, frowned upon his immersion into the world of the bears. Employing newly filmed interview footage with both supporters and detractors of his work, Herzog himself remains impartial to the multiple questions of ethics that arise, neither damning nor justifying Treadwell’s actions. Instead, his narration tends to lucidly express the respect he has for Treadwell as a filmmaker, and his ability to capture moments of extreme visual beauty. Herzog can obviously relate to a certain method in the bear buff’s madness and the relentless struggle of an eccentric filmmaker. One instance, with Treadwell ranting to the camera as his expedition comes to a close, sees him schizophrenically jumping between the roles of director and actor. This extraordinary one-man argument cannot help but evoke memories of the volatile relationship Herzog shared with Kinski, and in simultaneously embodying the ideals of both these men, the film becomes an interesting companion piece to Herzog’s Kinski documentary My Best Friend (1999).
Michael Blyth
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