GRIZZLY MAN (2005)
Werner Herzog's documentary about "Grizzly Man" Timothy Treadwell and what the 13 summers in a National Park in Alaska were like in one man's attempt to protect the grizzly bears.

Werner Herzog's documentary about "Grizzly Man" Timothy Treadwell and what the 13 summers in a National Park in Alaska were like in one man's attempt to protect the grizzly bears.
Grizzly Man follows the life of Timothy Treadwell, a man captivated by bears and repulsed by humanity, who spent many seasons in the company of bears at Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. He videotaped his encounters, where he spoke with a childlike affection to and about these creatures. Upon watching this archive footage, it doesn’t take long to recognise that Timothy has at least a few screws loose. But that’s part of the charm, even if it proves a frustrating watch, as director Werner Herzog is all too aware.
Grizzly Man proves a very interesting companion piece to the documentary Free Solo (2018), which charts the free soloing efforts of climber Alex Honnold (for those unaware, free soloing refers to mountain climbing without the aid of any ropes, effectively ensuring death in most of Alex’s climbs if he slips and falls). He’s gradually gearing himself up to climb the entirety of the El Capitan summit, one of the most daring feats in humankind, all while juggling a relationship along the way. His girlfriend, Sanni, is a huge part of the documentary, along with the back-and-forth struggle of a relationship that is built on trust yet includes a caveat for Alex’s potentially deadly exploits. Free Solo also provides a meditation on the worth of his pursuits, how responsible he is for embarking on them, and whether or not these filmmakers share responsibility in documenting this epic journey to pursue greatness.
Though their pursuits are extremely different, Timothy and Alex are both searching for ecstasy far away from the confines and compromises of everyday life. Alex is a thrill-seeker whose fear responses are significantly dulled compared to the average person, while Timothy detests society and its rules, having felt an affinity for grizzly bears since he was a young boy. A dispute over his flight ticket out of the national park was what prompted him to prolong his stay at Katmai, which led to the horrifying demise of him and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, at the hands of one of these bears.
Is it a spoiler to say that Alex Honnold did not perish in Free Solo? It’s hard to imagine that the film would be anything similar to what was released—if it would have been released at all—if he had died during the climb. But it clearly does not spoil anything to mention that Timothy Treadwell perished at the hands of these bears, since his death frames and informs the narrative at every turn. Herzog eschews portraying a typical journey through Timothy’s life that opens this film by exploring his early childhood (right after an acknowledgement of the tragedy of his passing), and finally ending up at its endpoint (or beginning, since everything in this story stems from death). That is not to say that Grizzly Man is particularly experimental. It employs regular interview and archival footage and follows a general trajectory through Timothy’s life, even if it zigzags enjoyably in the process, gradually showing different facets of his life and personality to demonstrate what his final days must have looked like, and what life trajectories could have possibly led him there.
Armed with different shades of Timothy’s identity through the footage he compiled on these nature retreats, Herzog stitches together an always interesting and sometimes profound exploration of someone who appeared to lack a lick of common sense, yet is oddly endearing all the same. Timothy’s reckless attitude did not just lead to his own death, but also that of his girlfriend (who was afraid of bears), and multiple bears once troopers attempted to salvage his remains. He saw himself as a protector of the bears, yet his claims about poachers roaming these lands are refuted by Herzog, while his own actions only lead to more suffering on that front.
The irresponsibility is incredible, frankly, especially when paired with Timothy’s high-pitched baby-talk to the bears, his expletive-filled rant regarding his peers where he pits himself as a saviour figure, and the relative absence of Amie in his footage. Timothy was eager to complain about the ways in which other people treated him as an outcast figure, but Amie, who stuck by him despite her fear of these wild animals, is hardly present, which Herzog makes clear, focusing for a moment on the only times she shows up in Timothy’s many video recordings.
While it’s likely that this is down to coincidence, it’s interesting all the same that Amie’s face is obscured in these rare moments. Her life is essentially left a mystery, with her family declining to be interviewed for Grizzly Man. Even when Timothy and the film seem to move past her existence for long stretches, Herzog trusts that he has planted enough of a seed in viewers’ minds for them to not forget about Amie as they watch this semi-crazed figure monologue about his affinity for bears. Her fate is the saddest of all; that is never forgotten.
Not all of the interview footage is riveting, must-watch cinema, but each perspective, whether from experts in various fields or those close to Timothy, offers a valuable contribution to a rich and multi-faceted exploration of a multi-faceted human being. Like Herzog, I briefly felt joy for Timothy in his travails, but was frustrated by him in equal measure. Some moments highlighting his delusions are actually very funny, like when he records himself hovering his hand over recently-excreted bear dung, almost brought to tears by the warmth emanating from this excrement and the fact it was produced from a living being, making it not just a product of life, but also life itself.
The Austrian director’s ruminations provide by far the most illuminating reflections throughout Grizzly Man. He recognises Timothy’s folly yet pities and even loves him, not just in spite of this fatal quality of his subject, but also because of it. For as infuriating and selfish as he was, I could not help but feel similarly to Herzog in his assessments of the man. Timothy didn’t get to experience the epic feeling of having conquered nature, as Alex did in Free Solo during his daring climb, but he was able to temporarily heal a part of himself that you sense was broken from very early in his life, lost within a world that only he could understand. He certainly enjoyed the privacy of this connection between him and the bears, reading into it to ridiculous degrees (he used to carry bear spray with him, but felt so awful about inflicting it on a bear for behaving aggressively towards him that he abandoned it for good).
Free Solo reminds you of man’s limitations constantly, meditating on the potential risks involved for Alex and everyone who has ever cared about him. But Grizzly Man is far starker in these efforts, since Timothy’s death doesn’t just bookend the film, it’s its very essence. A filmmaker like Herzog would likely have never felt any inclination to touch upon this subject matter—at least, not in this specific way—if not for Timothy’s death, its abject brutality, and the fact that it came at the hands of a species he cared for so much. This documentary does not point and laugh at its subject, even if there’s some dark humour present. Instead, it affords exactly as much pity and allowance as someone like Timothy deserved, as well as being a grave reminder of the risks of humanity contending with nature.
Though the documentary is never enthralling—Herzog employs a good mix of narration and interview/archive footage to tell this story, but it’s never bold, experimental, or arresting—Grizzly Man is a well-told tale as old as time, but which only one director could have illuminated quite as richly as this. It is a joy to listen to the gravitas of Herzog’s grave tone and the tantalising mix of pragmatism and idealism in his reflections. In many ways, this is his story as much as it’s Timothy’s, given the obvious affinity this director has for his subject (along with their shared reckless bravery). For that, Grizzly Man is an experience worth rewatching over the years, instead of being merely a mild, tragic curiosity.
USA | 2005 | 103 MINUTES | 1.78:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH
director: Werner Herzog.
starring: Timothy Treadwell, Werner Herzog, Jewel Palovak, Willy Fulton & Amie Huguenard.