Grizzly Man (DVD, 2005)

The amazing thing about Timothy Treadwell was that he survived 13 summers in the Alaska wilderness, living among gigantic, ferocious grizzly bears, until one of them finally ate him. Treadwell was a combination environmental activist, societal rebel, filmmaker, nutcase and holy fool. In other words, he was not unlike Werner Herzog, director of "Grizzly Man," the brilliant new documentary about Treadwell's life and horrible death. Herzog is much more self-aware than Treadwell ever was, and has much more of a sense of reality and irony. But as a filmmaker drawn to impossible projects ("Fitzcarraldo," "Aguirre, the Wrath of God"), he feels a definite kinship to Treadwell, even as he's appalled by Treadwell's egregious lapses of judgment. Treadwell shot more than 100 hours of film of himself and his beloved grizzlies, and Herzog culls the best of that film for "Grizzly Man." In his own film footage, Treadwell showed himself consistently to be an arrested adolescent, conflating the terrifying behemoths he lived among with his collection of teddy bears. (He speaks constantly of the mortal danger of living among grizzlies, but never quite seems to believe his own words.) Yet he also captured some of the most amazing nature scenes ever recorded, and Herzog respects him for that. (In his narration, Herzog also expresses great tenderness toward Amie Huguenard, the woman who loved Treadwell, followed him to the wilderness despite her fear of bears, and shared his horrible fate.) Whereas Treadwell sought order in nature, and believed the grizzlies loved him as much as he loved them, Herzog sees nothing in Treadwell's story except the workings of a chaotic universe sending one more dreamer to his doom. But because Treadwell's dreams were so outsized, Herzog sees him as a brother. So, thanks to Herzog, do we.

This movie is a HOOT! The footage of bears and foxes is better and more personal than any I have seen before. This is kind of a documentary on Tim more than the bears, and what I like about it, is that it uses footage that he would not have chosen to use had he been alive to make it himself. Therefore, you get to really see what it was like for him living out there on the preserve.