Grizzly Man

Started by MacGuffin, July 08, 2005, 03:50:41 PM

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w/o horse

This movie was like a conversation between me, god, Herzog, and humanity.  Except god is only talking to Herzog, humanity is doing most of the talking, and I'm just listening.  Look, I laughed my ass off at the guy, okay, I laughed at him first when his hat got stolen by the fox and I kept laughing at him all the way through.  But I always felt for him.  Herzog brilliantly walked the line with Treadwell as far as I'm concerned, because every time I'm laughing, or rolling my eyes (his view on gays and Hindu gods, examples), I'm understanding his condition, I'm understanding his flaws and some of them seem so familiar and some of them seem so creepy and seem of them seem so farfetched, but they all feel human.  And Pubrick said it back further, but Treadwell's is the bear, and Herzog's is cinema, and mine is cinema, and I try to be in those Alaskan woods, I try all the time.

No movie has ever made me feel like this one did.  I'm not trying to be hyperbolic here, the movie isn't my favorite, even my favorite of this year, but it was clearly a Herzog film, and it was effective at pulling emotion out of me.
Raven haired Linda and her school mate Linnea are studying after school, when their desires take over and they kiss and strip off their clothes. They take turns fingering and licking one another's trimmed pussies on the desks, then fuck each other to intense orgasms with colorful vibrators.

Alethia

Quote from: ranemaka13aww, i was gonna see it kinda second or third....  :oops:

watch murnau's then herzog's!

The Perineum Falcon

I was planning on watching them back to back, actually.
We often went to the cinema, the screen would light up and we would tremble, but also, increasingly often, Madeleine and I were disappointed. The images had dated, they jittered, and Marilyn Monroe had gotten terribly old. We were sad, this wasn't the film we had dreamed of, this wasn't the total film that we all carried around inside us, this film that we would have wanted to make, or, more secretly, no doubt, that we would have wanted to live.

abuck1220

it's funny how people have different opinions of treadwell.

my wife didn't have anything against him because he had finally found something that made him feel like his life was worthwhile...even though his 'efforts' didn't, in reality, amount to a bit of good. but, hey, if he wouldn't have found the bears, he probably would have drank himself to death or od'ed on herion or something. it's rare that you find something to feel that passionate about, and even if it ends up killing you, at least you had something for a while.

i, on the other hand, found him to be the most persistent, dedicated poser i've ever seen. he said all this stuff about how he loved the bears, wanted to protect them, would die for them, whatever...and i felt like he was full of shit. there were several times where i felt he was not at all geniune and that this whole thing was some kind of fucked up, elaborate home movie/scam that he did to entertain himself and gain publicity. i felt like 'living with bears' was his trucker hat/poker fascination/whatever people think is cool right now. he was just really, really, really dedicated to his trucker hat.

either way, i figure he's a pretty fascinating guy.

then my wife said i was cynical and judgmental.

also, if i didn't know this was real, i would have thought that this whole thing was an elaborate blair witchesque hoax by herzog. some of the interviewees seemed like actors.

Myxo

Quote from: abuck1220either way, i figure he's a pretty fascinating guy.

then my wife said i was cynical and judgmental.

You're right on both counts and that's not a bad thing.

Whatever good intentions he had to start out with ended up being more about him than the bears.

RegularKarate

I don't think that's it though.  I think he truly believed that the bears held some mystical quality and he TRULY wanted to help them, but he really didn't know enough about bears to actually do anything good for them.  He doesn't understand them... he's not a scientist of any sort... and he's really just fucking up the ecosystem by doing what he's doing.

I think the reason people think he's insincere is because he's an actor and he acts on camera.  That doesn't mean he's not sincere, he's just trying to juice up the show he seems to think one day will be watched by children in mental institutions everywhere.

Gamblour.

So yeah I watched this, trying to finish out the films I need to see this year. Man, so many thoughts. At the same time, all these people were characters and it even felt like a mockumentary, like the scene with the wrist watch, or the bit about losing to Woody Harrelson. I watched it with two friends, one of whom is big on animals. we all kinda came to the same conclusion that the guy clearly knows no science about bears, but knows a lot about their intuitions, which I found really fascinating that he understood their behavior and their response to stimuli. My other friend called him an egomaniac, which I guess is true, but if you're the woods by yourself, does your ego make a sound? anyhow, I might want to watch it again, because it's so outrageous and you feel for this guy yet you want to call him crazy. I don't think he's crazy, just very passionate. And that mustached guy and whoever said it on here that said he deserved to be eaten alive by a bear is a fucking asshole. that's like saying a electrician deserves to be electrocuted or that a cop deserves to be shot. They all do things that put them in certain harm's way, Treadwell more than others. Treadwell knew he was risking his life, he said so about twenty times from what we saw. He was searching for a life and enlightenment and he found it and died for it, and that's admirable to me. Living doesn't have to be your standards, it's got to be the individual's.

This too was my first Herzog, so I'm still dealing with how strangely humorous some things were, not the narration but the juxtaposition of things. Also, I think the film is very simple and basic with complex passages of authorial interruption. Overall, the man and his character transcend the film, and I did like Herzog's opinion, because he was using his voice, not the footage to manipulate the audience, and at least there's that separation. I think I liked it, but we'll see if it makes my top ten. I dunno yet.

Edit: fuck, I don't think I saw the full version of this film. Is there a segment with David Letterman?
WWPTAD?

squints

#37
I had the same feeling watching this movie as i had watching Gates of Heaven except it was stronger and i felt  more. such an awesome amazing movie
"The myth by no means finds its adequate objectification in the spoken word. The structure of the scenes and the visible imagery reveal a deeper wisdom than the poet himself is able to put into words and concepts" – Friedrich Nietzsche

decemberlove

I sat through this shit last night, now I demand to hear the tape. I deserve some type of reward for not getting up and shutting it off.

I didn't find Treadwell to be nearly as annoying as his ex-girlfriend, or nearly as creepy as the coroner. Herzog reminds me of the weird old men who perv at me all the time. Everyone in this "documentary" seemed to be overacting. What was with that line about the cows screaming or whatever from Treadwell's old "friend"? Or Herzog's line about a metaphor for his soul? Or the psycho ex's potpourri mix of death? Weird.

More of the bears. Less of the attention whores.


Oh well, I haven't laughed so much since Wedding Crashers.

Anonymous Joe

You would want to hear someones death, someone being eating alive?

Gamblour.

decemberlove, was this your first herzog?
WWPTAD?

JG

Is that at your local best buy?  I'm thinking of buying this, even though I haven't seen it yet and it would be my first Herzog. 

Alexandro

really powerfull experience. it made me look into my own soul. the most disturbing and at the same time wonderful about this movie is that treadwell is just another human being. we can't help it, he can't help it. he acts like a bear but can't help to  have the most human reaction when in desperation asks God to send some rain. I saw myself on that moment so clearly, cause who hasn't done that? And who has not reduced the complexities of life to simple, solvable little problems??

This movie covers so much ground and in such a way that for me it was more of a spritual experience than just watching a movie.

SPOILERS (?)
I didn't know there was no tape recording of him being eaten alive so for like the first 40 minutes or something I was about to have a nervous breackdown just with the tought that they were gonna show it. Everytime he appeared with bears I thought "this is it". Then when they said that wasn't gonna happen (including the audio tape) instead of feeling cheated or unsatisfied I truly felt reliefed.

ShanghaiOrange

For anyone who hasn't seen this yet, they're playing it on Discovery this friday at 8 (check your local listings).
Last five films (theater)
-The Da Vinci Code: *
-Thank You For Smoking: ***
-Silent Hill: ***1/2 (high)
-Happy Together: ***1/2
-Slither: **

Last five films (video)
-Solaris: ***1/2
-Cobra Verde: ***1/2
-My Best Fiend: **1/2
-Days of Heaven: ****
-The Thin Red Line: ***

Reinhold

i thought it was good.

i thought that treadwell was clearly a little crazy, and clearly had an addictive personality. and i think his ex-girlfriend was an attention whore. it's really unfortunate that his girlfriend at the time of his death got eaten with him. she was just along for some seemingly cool ride that was more than she bargained for, even before they decided to stay longer and ended up being killed.

i think that he was a good guy with great intentions who became delusional. not unlike michael jackson in a sense. he lost grasp of what's harmful and what isn't, what's part of his fantasy and what's part of the tangible world. i think he had a lot of love to give-- whether it was from being a recovering acloholic, a fanatic, or just a loving person... i think he was an unstable guy trying to do a very good thing.

the most revealing part of the documentary, to me, wasn't the rant or any part in which he talked to himself-- cut him a break... he was alone in the woods for a long time, and he thought he'd be alive to edit the footage himself. 

SPOILERS

what i found most revealing was the part in which he refused to acknowledge that wild creatures killing other wild creatures (even babies) is what sometimes happens in nature. he'd come to believe that humans were the only thing that caused pain, and seeing otherwise was shattering to him. it was like a kid figuring out that santa isn't real. in addition to having to confront that individual piece of unpleasant information-- his whole mode of trusting the world was shaken.

he kept saying that he'd die for the bears, but clearly he never believed that a bear would take his life. he had come to believe that they were rational beings who make an emotionally motivated decision as to whether or not to kill. when he said that sort of thing, he probably had some romantic vision of getting between a poacher/park ranger and a bear and taking a bullet to save the bear's life. he imagined a mutual understanding and respect that he expected to shield him from harm.

also, i don't think that he was too far off when he interpreted the happy face thing as a coy threat. it was the wilderness equivalent to somebody calling your cell phone from outside your house at night and saying, "i see you." it was genuine concern for the bears--regardless of the fact that he transferred his addiction from alcohol to bears-- that drove what he did. he was cramping the poacher's style, and they wanted to tell him that that wasn't cool. clearly, they were trying to scare him into not bugging them next year.


i think that, in many ways, the bear that ate him killed a child in a man's body. it's this layman's theory that he reverted to childhood modes of escape to deal with his demons. the bears were as much imaginary friends as they were real beasts that were capable of killing him.  watch him repeatedly try to touch the bears as he talks to them. it's like a child imagining that a stray doberman in the neighborhood is a kind-hearted unicorn to ride.  ... watch him hesitate in the last frame of his documentary. it's like a little kid lingering in the playground while his mother is calling him to come in for dinner.

it wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that he thought he was some sort of peter pan taking wendy to neverland to live forever. when it didn't work out that way, he, in that last shot in the rain, was confused like a child is when the fun has to end early.
Quote from: Pas Rap on April 23, 2010, 07:29:06 AM
Obviously what you are doing right now is called (in my upcoming book of psychology at least) validation. I think it's a normal thing to do. People will reply, say anything, and then you're gonna do what you were subconsciently thinking of doing all along.