Da Bearz!

Just finished watching "Grizzly Man." A VERY haunting, sad, and scary film that deals with my favorite issue (of course) of mankind's interactions with nature. One of the most entertaining parts of the movie is Werner Herzog's narration, although at times I felt he pressed his own judgements on the viewer more than he should have instead of letting us draw our own conclusions. At one point when Treadwell (the guy who got killed) points out how harmonious nature is, Herzog's narration states something along the lines of "All I see here is the indifference of nature." I would be inclined to side somewhere in the middle of these two views, but Herzog doesn't give us a chance to decide what we think--he just tells us HIS opinion and disrupts our chain of thought. This happens on multiple occasions later in the doc too. Still, Herzog's German (I think) accent is always fun to listen to: "For thirteen yearz, he would liv with da bearz!"

Another bone of contention (so to speak) with the film that has raised my morbid curiousity is the fact that Treadwill and his girlfriend's death by one of the bears is actually recorded on audiotape. We get plenty of nightmare-inducing descriptions of what the tape sounds like, and Herzog is even shown listening to the tape himself. However Herzog tells the woman who owns the tape "never to listen to it" and "to burn it." I WANT TO HEAR THE FUCKING TAPE!!! The movie doesn't feel complete without it. I don't CARE if I can't sleep for nights afterwards! I want to know Treadwill's story, and in what way is Herzog more privledged than I to hear it?

However, despite these things that irk me, what haunted me most was the fact that I could sympathize with Treadwill so much. To be sure, he was fairly loopy, and anyone who decides to hang out with GRIZZLY BEARS of all creatures is asking for trouble. However, much of this loopiness could be attributed to Treadwill's past involving drugs. And granted, if ANYONE hangs out in the wilderness alone for an extended period of time, it is easy to start to go a little "nuts" in the view of "civilized" people. Trust me. I've never done drugs, but I know that chances are I would seem a little strange too if I spent entire summers with no human contact. And there IS much that Treadwill says that makes sense to me. Granted his politics are off, and something has clearly addled his brains somewhere along the line, but his heart is in nature nonetheless, and I certainly could sympathize with his lone wanderings, musing, and connectings with the natural world.

Also, the fact that Treadwill did go out there for THIRTEEN YEARS with those bears and be OK for that amount of time really does prove these creatures aren't monsters. Granted, it is a REALLY bad idea to hang out with grizzlies, but they aren't the sort of animals that are going to attack you at first sight (only chupacabras do that). It appears Treadwill only finally got munched because the bear in question was old, starving, and desperate. It was trying to survive just as all of us are.

Maybe I AM just an environmental whacko, but hell, if I could choose to get eaten by a T. Rex, I would. And Treadwill says that getting killed by a bear is the way he wants to go. So there's something hauntingly poetic about his horrific death.

Oh yeah...Anthony...you're KIDDING about HP right? If not, I AM SO FREAKING SORRY!!!