Documentary: A Paws Celebre
It would be incorrect, albeit tempting, to say that documentary film rode the wave of "reality" obsession to its current level of popularity. If anything, documentary has succeeded, as both a critics’ darling and a profitmaker, despite the reality television craze. People enjoy reality shows because their own voyeurism happily confirms that the narrative arcs of scripted television are present in "real" life, as well. The documentary’s success as a genre, though, thrives on its inability of its films to answer all the questions they ask, intentionally or unintentionally. For this reason, perhaps, the AFI film festival Silverdocs has used a campaign of all questions to promote its line-up.
"Grizzly Man," by the world-renowned German director Werner Herzog, had already morphed into the centerpiece of the festival even a month ago. The festival’s directors had to add a second screening Friday night to accommodate the high demand. Suspicious, that a movie about a man obsessed with giant Alaskan bears, would garner such attention. Yet, "Grizzly Man" took the audience along with it into the core of the mystery of its central (human) character, and as all good documentaries do, simply left it there to wander, without a map.
The film relies mostly on the footage shot by its hero, antihero and guide, Timothy Treadwell, an eco-activist of sorts. For 13 summers straight, Treadwell camped in the Alaskan wilderness to live with the bears. He used his footage to teach elementary school children about the dangers facing the species and even earned himself a spot on Letterman.
Most of the film’s interviewees argue he wanted to become a bear as well, in the least metaphorical sense possible. As Treadwell often effuses, "I love the bears. I love, love, love these animals." At first glance, his childlike enthusiasm seems innocent enough. He studies them eating, fighting, and using trees as back-scratchers. When he goes mano y paw-o with the giant grizzlies he gets snouted away with a huff and puff but never a chomp. (That comes later.)
It’s not ruining the ending to disclose Treadwell’s death. Unlike feature film, documentary isn’t interested in isolating the climactic moment. It diffuses it throughout the movie to ask what started the ball rolling. We know immediately that Treadwell died at the claws of a lean and ill-tempered old grizzly, and that Treadwell’s girlfriend who feared the bears, and perhaps feared her boyfriend more, died at his side, beating their assailant with a frying pan. What we don’t know –- what the filmmaker doesn’t know either –- is what drove this affable, sentimental boy from Long Island to become so addicted to alcohol and drugs that he required a new, and more radically dangerous, obsession to clean himself up.
To say he was an outsider is not enough. He always thought the walls between himself and civilization were too great to be scaled, even as he deluded himself into thinking he could traverse the border between human and animal, like a line in the sand. The answer is complex, and Herzog offers only some primary sources and scant, if overwritten, commentary to guide us. In the end the film succeeds because both Herzog and Treadwell compellingly convey their fascination with a figure they feel connected to but will never understand.
Silverdocs runs through Sunday, June 19. "Grizzly Man" is slated for broader release on Aug. 5.