During Grizzly Man, Timothy Treadwell
repeatedly refers to the grizzly bears he encounters as his “best friends.” This idea that Treadwell could somehow
develop relationships with these wild animals is called into question
throughout the film. For example,
following one scene in which Treadwell passionately declares his love for these
animals, director Werner Herzog interviews the curator of an Alaskan grizzly
bear museum who has a very different take on their relationship. The curator explains that having grown up
around grizzly bears in Alaska, he was always taught never to interact with
them. The members of his town simply
believed there was a line between wildlife and man that was never to be
crossed. By agreeing to leave each other
alone, both the grizzly bears and the townspeople benefitted. In fact, Herzog appears to share this stance
regarding interaction with wildlife as well.
Towards the end of the documentary, Herzog mentions the fact that after
having watched more than 100 hours of Treadwell’s footage, he never once
noticed any indication of the relationships Treadwell claimed to be a part of. Instead of developing relationships,
Treadwell was putting himself into a much more vulnerable position by choosing
to interact with the bears. The National
Parks Service states that bears must be viewed from at least 300 yards away and
that approaching the bear might lead the bear to believe you are attacking
it. Treadwell repeatedly violated this
law while attempting to approach the bears and this might have contributed to
his death.
The use of
personal video cameras has obviously impacted our society in terms of how we
share our lives with others. With a
video camera and sites like YouTube, we can all become filmmakers in a
sense. For Timothy Treadwell, a video
camera meant a chance to share his eco-friendly message with the world. Before he went to live in the Alaskan
wilderness each year he would ask a friend of his to make a movie out of his
footage if he didn’t return. Despite the
fact that Treadwell was extremely poor, he was able to transmit his message to
a much larger audience than he ever could have hoped via Herzog’s use of his
own personal footage. In a way, the use
of Treadwell’s personal recordings had a much more profound effect on viewers
than that of a more conventional documentary.
The care Treadwell took in creating his shots, along with the manic
rants he occasionally went on before and after takes, provided a much clearer
picture of the man than one would have gotten from reporters. While it became obvious that Treadwell was a
bit off, the audience was able to look past all of the reports that simply
dismissed him as crazy because of the private nature of his footage. Ultimately, without his own recordings it
would have been impossible to develop a complete picture of Treadwell like the
one that was developed in Grizzly Man.
