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Werner Herzog’s documentary film Grizzly Man follows the life and death of Timothy Treadwell, an environmentalist who spent thirteen years defending bears and animals, capturing over one hundred hours of footage in the Alaskan wilderness.
Herzog narrates the documentary in a voice-of-god style, while Treadwell’s film is projected on the screen — the documentary also includes interviews with scientists and politicians, as well as Timothy Treadwell’s family and friends.
I drew Herzog’s major point from the documentary: while Treadwell’s passion for animals is wonderful, his inability to comprehend the risk he was placing himself in was definitely going to lead to his death.
When we meet Treadwell’s parents in one of the interview segments, they tell Herzog about Timothy’s love of teddy bears and how he always carried one with him – we even see this teddy bear later in Treadwell’s own film, during the storm in Alaska.
An attentive audience will notice how a grown man still carries a teddy bear, which illustrates Treadwell’s inability to distinguish between fiction and reality. It connotes youthful innocence, yet the viewers will find this disturbing in this circumstance.
Treadwell’s childlike innocence is reflected further in his body language and tone, for example, when he films one of the bears scratching itself against a tree, and when it walks away, he takes the bear’s place on the screen and shows excitement, using the high tone of his voice and stunning facial expressions, repeatedly saying,
“He’s a huge bear!” He’s a huge bear!” When a newborn fox dies and Treadwell records himself bending down by the fox, his body language and tone change radically to communicate his anguish.
This is a tactic used to manipulate the mood of the audience – we can know Treadwell prepared this scenario carefully since his body is positioned abnormally for the camera and the effect the action will have on the viewer. “I don’t understand,” he adds, demonstrating how Treadwell does not experience nature and the circle of life in the same way as most adult people do; rather, he sees life and death through the eyes of a kid.
Herzog’s narrative frequently focuses on Treadwell’s juvenile mentality and lack of comprehension and presents this youthful character as insanity and cause for alarm, rather than innocent. This comment advances Herzog’s agenda, and the viewer will pay attention after hearing the perspective of Treadwell’s close buddy, as well as Herzog’s exposition:
“In my view, Treadwell felt these bears were enormous, scary-looking, innocent creatures he could go up to and stroke and sing to, and they’d bond as if they were children of the cosmos or something.” I believe he lost sight of what was going on.” – Sam Egli, a friend.
Before any narrative or exposition from Herzog, the documentary begins with a scene taken by Treadwell, in which Treadwell begins to discuss his mission. The image is framed with Treadwell to the right, in the foreground, and a wide wilderness with bears dominating most of the frame.
Timothy Treadwell’s placement in the foreground indicates that he is the focal point and desires control of the event. However, where the terrain and bears take up the bulk of the frame, they occupy a big portion of the scene’s hierarchy while being in the background.
Herzog’s use of this scene at the beginning of the documentary may be a reflection of the hierarchy throughout Treadwell’s footage; Timothy Treadwell has control over the framing of the shots, but the bears will always have the ultimate hierarchy, which Treadwell’s childlike innocence prevents him from acknowledging.
He speaks calmly yet passionately and theatrically, with a small grin on his face at times. He claims, “Most of the time, I’m a good warrior out here.” Most of the time, I’m soft, like a flower, or a fly on the wall, watching, noncommittal, and noninvasive in any form. I am occasionally challenged, and in such cases, the nice warrior must become a samurai, must become so terrible, so fearless of death, so powerful that he will prevail, he will win.”
Treadwell’s “persona” portrayed environmentalists and animal lovers in a terrible light, in my opinion. Treadwell portrays environmentalists as obsessive and quirky, with a warped vision of civilization and an obsession with nature. In the first scene, he uses words like “samurai” and “gentle warrior,” and he refers to himself as a flower.
Some listeners may see this as a joke, which is backed by Treadwell’s smile in the opening scene. We don’t know if the grin was real, but as an audience interpreting implications and indicators, the smirk, together with the terminology he employs, might come across as ridicule and sarcasm.
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