Review – Grizzly Man

Not for the first time I found myself wondering what happened to Werner Herzog early in life that made him the way he is. Also not for the first time, the director’s obsession with grim, Germanic themes of chaos and death interferes with the movie he might otherwise have made. This time around the production could have been an interesting documentary about Timothy Treadwell, a mildly mentally ill man obsessed with grizzly bears. Treadwell produced hours and hours of video footage of himself in the wilderness observing and interacting with bears, not to mention constantly proclaiming his love for them. The Treadwell footage alone would have made an interesting movie, particularly in light of the fact that eventually one of them killed and ate him. But unfortunately Herzog felt the need to tack a bunch of interviews into the mix. Even that would have been okay, but he takes the further step of doing a lot of really dreadful narration about the wanton cruelty of the universe. We heard this already years ago in Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams, Werner. Leave it out. Mildly amusing