On Not Feeding the Bears

Yesterday I saw Werner Herzog's latest film, Grizzly Man. It's a documentary about Timothy Treadwell, the failed-actor who discovered his life's vocation living 13 summers among grizzly bears in the Alaskan peninsula. It's a very provocative, and cleverly made, film by a director who takes strong exception with his subject's view of nature. Treadwell, indeed, seems mentally imbalanced by the end of the film, living in a narcissistic fantasy world that seems right out of a wonderful world of Disney's talking animals that Treadwell takes for reality. He tells bear after bear, "I love you."

Herzog effectively uses portions of 100 hours of videotape that Treadwell shot on location, and mixes it with his own footage of interviews with people who knew Treadwell before he and his girlfriend were eaten by one of his grizzlies and interviews with others, such as the coroner who examined the audio-only tape of Treadwell's demise along with the remains of Treadwell and his girlfriend, both extracted from the grizzly's stomach after it was killed by a team of "rescuers."

None of the carnage is shown, nor is the audio tape played. Even the question of playing the tape or listening to it is a subject of interest. Herzog talks to one of Treadwell's former girlfriends (she heads up Grizzlypeople.com) and tells her not to listen to it. We see Herzog with earphones on, listening to it, then handing the tape to her to be destroyed. I do not recall a moment in a film that so effectively raises the question of what is "obscene" and best left "off the stage," as the word means.

The film is rated R for language (especially one of Treadwell's last speeches), and probably for a brutal bear fight that makes the "fur fly" literally. Despite the seriousness of the subject, and the tragic ending (which is disclosed very early in the 103-minute film), I found it taxing to supress hard laughter at some of the irony, stupidities, and delusional dialogue.

Grizzly Man, does, however, raise some very serious issues, sometimes obliquely, and perhaps in some cases unintentional. It raises topics such as sex (Treadwell says that he wished he were gay, because it's "easier"; Herzog mentions bear "fornication"), whether or not there are fixed lines in nature that should be respected (a Native Alaskan talks about native respect for grizzlies), and the narcissism of celebrity culture (Treadwell makes it on to the David Letterman show). Was Treadwell a product of his culture? Partially, I suppose: he would not have done what he did without the media.

Yet at the film's center is the question upon which Treadwell's fate hangs: what is the nature of nature? Is the universe benign, harmonious? Herzog doesn't think so, and thinks Treadwell naive, if not ultimately at war with civilization itself. Herzog's most memorable "shot" for me was his choice to zoom in on the eyes of a grizzly bear: is this a friendly "child of the universe" or an indfferent appetite looking for its next meal?

Pehaps unintentionally, Herzog also made me think some time after the movie about the differences between men and women: the responses of the men and women in the film to the life and especially the death of Treadwell are worth contrasting. And finally, Treadwell's well-intented but delusional solicitude for the bears matured into a full-fledged messianic perversion: in one scene he "prays"; he loved the bears and would, as he said often into the camera, always protect them and even "die for the bears" if he had to. He died, but not for them.

It's a film I will likely watch again, when it comes out on DVD.

Comments

[lisa]

One wonders if the bear asked a blessing. "For this couple, I give thanks".

[Dcn. Michael D. Harmon]

As Christians, we consume the Body and Blood of Jesus in the Eucharist. In this case, the creatures he loved consumed him.

It reminds of a passage in C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters, in which it is implied that the demons actually consume the souls they have seduced into damnation. Saints preserve us, indeed.

[Charles R. Williams]

As a culture we increasing sentimentalize animals and project our humanity on them. Treadwell seems to be an extreme case.

[Rick Ritchie]

Before going to Yosemite last time, I read a tongue-in-cheek article online called "Why Jews Don't Camp." The gist of it was that without the full benefits of civilization, things go wrong. The Judeo-Christian outlook is not sentimental on that point.

On the trip, we backpacked up behind Nevada Falls and spent the night. A youth in our group left trail mix in his backpack. (The adults had not left so much as shampoo or bug spray in theirs.) Late that night, as I listened to a bear shred the kid's backpack and pondered how far from any help we were if the bear returned for us, I thought, "Those Jews were right!" It may be the Ahwahnee Hotel for me from now on.