the kind warrior
by
Douglas Messerli
Written
and directed by Werner Herzog Grizzly
Man / 2005
A
great many of Werner Herzog’s cinematic heroes are men of stunning
contradictions (Fitzcarraldo, Kasper Hauser, Stroszek, and Woyzeck to name only
a few), but none of them is more so than Timothy Treadwell, the focus of his
2005 documentary Grizzly Man.
Treadwell saw himself as a protector of
wildlife, particularly of the bears in Federal Alaskan parks, a “kind warrior,”
as he put it, at one with the spirit of the wilderness. And for 13 years he lived among the wild giants and
friendly foxes, many of whom even submitted to his gentle petting. If nothing
else, in his own mind, Treadwell was a true hero, teaching young children, in
his off time for free, through the films he had made on the Alaskan Peninsula,
about the wonders of his orsine neighbors. He particularly saw himself as a
protector of them from poachers.
Yet park officials maintain that there
had been little if any poaching of the beasts, which were protected except for
limited kills. Moreover, by living among them, he may, in fact, have inured the
bears to the dangers of human beings, and thereby endangering them and humans
visiting the park. Although his films may have made his Grizzlies into a
natural wonder, they also advertised the bears’ whereabouts, with gawkers and
hunters following Treadwell’s tracks to the Grizzly maze.
Although he had loyal women friends, Amie
Huguenard and Jewel Palovak among them, Treadwell, it seems, was a bit of a
misogynist, in one tape wishing that he were gay so that he could freely have
one sexual encounter after another (as if that’s what most gay men desire); he
laments having to “finesse” women.
Although Herzog sees, in Treadwell’s
numerous on-camera retakes and costume changes, evidence of a skillful
documentarian—and given some of the beautiful scenes we are shown, it is clear
that Treadwell was able to capture natural events that many more noted
directors were unable to—these same scenes also reveal a highly narcissistic
human being, a man increasingly moving away from the real world in order to
live in his own imagined and even sentimentalized Eden.
Indeed, his last trip back to the lower
states, after encountering a rude airport agent, sent him back to Alaska,
putting himself and his companion, Huguenard, into further danger by coming
into contact with Grizzlies during the period in which they headed for
hibernation and were necessarily trying to provide themselves with enough food
to survive it.
The bear that finally killed Treadwell and
Huguenard was a relative stranger to the area, and surely was less intrigued by
the bear-lover's existence than simply recognizing him and his companion as sources
of sustenance. When the animal was later shot, there was evidence of four human
bodies within its stomach (I wish we might have discovered who these “others”
might have been; were they, like Treadwell, simply putting themselves in
danger?).
Of course, without Treadwell, we could not
have experienced such thrills as watching, arctic
foxes scampering through the landscape of the
burly, lumbering giants, nor have witnessed a fight between two would-be Alpha
male bears, wherein the elder fights off the younger’s challenges. And it is
quite beautiful to observe Treadwell’s obvious love for the animals and
landscape of the wild. We have the ominous sense, throughout, that even if the
two had not been brutally eaten in 2003, that that year might have been Treadwell’s
last. Throughout, the documentarian with the documentary warns himself and us
of the dangers he daily encounters; part of his self-mystification, surely, but
also clearly the truth. That he had survived for so many years is, as all those
knowledgeable proclaim, more than a miracle.
In the end, Herzog would have us see
Treadwell as a kind of transformed “believer,” as a man who, after a near-death
experience from drugs, was born again into an almost mystical relationship with
nature. He wanted, so it’s suggested, to himself become a bear. In the Grizzly
Treadwell found a new god. To
give Herzog credit, he interviews a native Inuit scholar, whose own culture
also idolized the bears, but who, unsentimentally, kept a far distance from
them, recognizing their powers and dangers.
Like many who embrace strange outsider
religions, Treadwell’s embracement of the god-like bear ended in his and Anne Huguenard’s
deaths—something which perhaps Treadwell himself subliminally desired, while
yet urging Huguenard in the last moments (so we are told) to run, to abandon
the faith.
Los Angeles,
April 14, 2016
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