Grizzly Man (2005)

“Treadwell is gone. The argument of how wrong or how right he was, disappears into a distance into a fog. What remains is his footage.” — Werner Herzog

The most disturbing part of Werner Herzog’s documentary Grizzly Man (2005) is not the gruesome nature of Timothy Treadwell’s fate. Rather it’s Treadwell’s misguided benevolence which was self-serving and came from a profound misunderstanding of nature. Herzog weaves found footage from the last few years of Treadwell’s summers observing grizzly bears in Alaska and almost theatrical interviews with his loved ones and locals to paint the portrait a complex individual. While Treadwell’s violent death looms over the film, Herzog expertly engages the audience in what seems like a film within a film, one that Treadwell was still making when his subject became his killer. In the end, this is a film about an individual who went from a child who loved teddy bears to a traumatized man who desperately wanted to be accepted by a dangerous and ultimately indifferent creature.