GRIZZLY MAN (2005)

SHORT REVIEW: A leftist moron does the kind of thing that only a leftist moron would do: he lives with bears in the wild and gets eaten alive. A leftist moron director does the kind of thing only a leftist moron director would do, he tries to make the previously mentioned jackass into a hero. I honestly can’t tell you not to watch this documentary. While it is an embarrassing and ultimately depressing movie and is worthy of your disdain, it may be the sharpest look at leftist delusion ever put to film. The real life characters in this film are so odd I kept getting the feeling I was watching a Christopher Guest improv piece. This documentary is about Timothy Treadwell who was a goodball who lived with wild grizzly bears in Alaska for an amazing thirteen summers. The film is constructed of actual footage taken by Treadwell, interviews with people who knew him and intrusive and meaningless narration by famed director Werner Herzog. To be plain about this film, I’ll simply state that Treadwell was a very damaged man who, in his perverted desire to be accepted by ANYTHING, intruded upon nature and eventually paid with his life and the life of his girlfriend. I was struck at Treadwell’s lack of vision that his self-appointed role as “warrior” for the grizzly bears led him to hurt his precious animal friends. Per usual with leftists, his desire to help others came from wanting to define himself – not from actually wanting to cure other’s ills. Since the impulse to help comes from a selfish place, leftists tend to hurt those who need their assistance. This is a common sight around the world and across history. This is the lesson of this film. The film attempts to paint Treadwell as a troubled but almost mystic presence in the Alaskan wilderness. He is shown as a determined man set to protect the grizzly bears from human encroachment. Needless to say, Treadwell’s living amongst the bears for his own benefit DEFINES HUMAN ENCROACHMENT. I know he and others believed that he was doing something noble. Sometimes what appears to be noble is just stupidity with an extra dose of self-importance. Herzog, being the typical European leftist dimwit, offers a stream of hollow pronouncements about Treadwell that in the end mean absolutely nothing. Herzog’s grand words don’t match what is we see on screen. He tells his audience that Treadwell is a sincere and talented filmmaker (to his credit, Treadwell did get some good footage) then we get to see self composed shots of Treadwell handling bear feces exclaiming “It’s still warm! It’s her poop! It came out of her butt! Everything about them is perfect!” Herzog does offer a couple of interviews with people who share my view that getting bears used to human involvement is inherently destructive. I also give credit to Herzog for not playing the surviving audio footage of Treadwell’s inevitable consumption by the bears. This does show some restraint that some filmmakers wouldn’t have mustered. Those credits out of the way, Herzog’s documentary is contrived and simply foolish. Through the viewing of self serving footage, inorganic interviews and deluded observations by the director himself, we are asked to respect a deeply hurt and wanting man. The only thing more pathetic than a man who, through his denial of reality, commits suicide is the man that admires him for the effort. RELATED REVIEWS: Other leftist documentaries Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) Outfoxed: Rupert Murdochs War On Journalism (2004) Categories: film, movie, DVD, review, Grizzly Man, Timothy Treadwell, Werner Herzog