GRIZZLY MAN AT SILVERDOCS

Went with Thomas and Maggie to see Werner Herzog's documentary Grizzly Man at Silverdocs on Friday. Following the screening was a Q & A with Herzog, producer Erik Nelsen, and Jewel Palovak, who was a close friend of Timothy Treadwell, the subject of the movie.

I agree with Thomas that Treadwell is unpromising, initially, but Herzog also sets up the story in order to create that impression. Within the first 20 minutes, we hear the harshest criticisms of him that the movie contains: a claim - without much commentary - from a member of the recovery crew that he was a nut who "got what he deserved," and a mournful description by a curator of a museum on Kodiak island of the inappropriateness of his having crossed the boundary between human and bear. This latter comment is especially striking. The interview starts with the curator's lament that tourists had vandalized a stuffed grizzly; shots of a mutilated grizzly paw mirror the curator's claim that Treadwell was complicit in the destruction of a natural, ancient harmony understood by those whose culture places them in proximity to the grizzlies. Was Treadwell merely an adventure tourist?

Herzog tells us that he interested in Treadwell precisely because he crossed the boundary, however. Over the course of the movie,it becomes clear why Treadwell's dual act of self-exploration and self-narration holds such a interest for Herzog. (Herzog claimed that he demanded to do the movie almost immediately after Nelsen showed him the proposal. Thomas suspects that Herzog is trying to establish a broader partnership with Discovery, and that might be true, but I'm willing to take Herzog at his word that Treadwell grabbed his attention.)

For me, the dramatic climax of the movie arrives when Herzog notes his explicit disagreement with Treadwell on the appropriate understanding of nature as a whole. For Treadwell, the death of a baby fox or a bear cub is an occasion for mourning - "I just don't understand," he says repeatedly, and there is a beatiful scene where Treadwell's camera lingers over what appears to be a dead bumblebee. For Herzog, however, nature is chaos and struggle. Unbeknownst to himself, Treadwell's inner struggle is an expression of that chaos and the attempt to impose some order on it through a belief in the goodness of nature and an image of self-destruction, especially - but not exclusively - in an act of heroic generosity.

Synposis: I'm not sure what to think of Treadwell, but the movie is brilliant.