Blog Post 3 — Grizzly Man

The documentary ‘Grizzly Man’, directed by Werner Herzog in 2005, follows both the life and the death of Timothy Treadwell. After sifting through years and years of video tapes, Herzog discusses why this man was so passionately obsessed with nature — specifically wild grizzly bears. The modality of this documentary is quite noticeably participatory, and uses the director to create a framework to tell its story.

Now usually with this modality, the film maker becomes a character in the film itself. The audience get a sense of truth through the relationship between the director and the subject, rather than straight from the subject. In this case the director not only narrates the entire film, but even places himself in front of the camera right at the end. This gives the film a genuine feel to it, as if the director is truly on a quest to uncover the reality that was the incredibly interesting man, Timothy Treadwell.

This modality creates a relationship between the director and the audience. Michael Moore attempted the same modality with his ‘Bowling for Columbine’ in 2002; a film that sparked a bit of a trend in documentaries that tend to follow the filmmaker on their quest to uncover the rawest truth on the subject. This modality, as engaging as it is, has a downside. That downside being that most of the time, the director becoming directly engaged with the story can lead to emotional biases at the cost of absolute genuine truth.

Herzog has a bit of a habit of being present in his films. Whether it’s his voiceover or if he’s physically in the shot, it’s kind of a stylistic part of what he does so well. It could argued that reason that he chose this modality to shoot Grizzly Man was simply that — it’s what he does. But I feel like there’s something more to it. I feel like he saw more to this story. The journey of sifting through years of footage and really immersing oneself of the life of this interesting man was so evident to the audience, that we felt like we taken on an adventure with him. The clever layering of footage mixed well with interviews with people closest to Treadwell would not have been as powerful if we didn’t have a guide to lead us through the expedition which was his amazing and unusual life.

It’s through the discoveries of Werner Herzog that us as an audience can really be brought along through the story world and see the full story for what it was to the director himself. Any other modality just wouldn’t have done the film justice. The film needed a guide, and Herzog was the man for the job.

-Beau.