Grizzly Man.pdf

This thesis is dedicated to Carolyn Longo, whose love and encouragement made the

entire opportunity possible. Thanks, mom.

It is also dedicated to Christopher Pavsek, whose teaching and friendship have inspired

me. Thanks, Chris.

“I was asleep at home, and Martje appeared before me. She walked over to the edge of a

cliff and stood there, tottering. I felt frightened, and dashed toward the edge, where I

seized her, saving her as she was about to fall off the cliff and die. Right at that point,

Martje awoke in a panic. My hands were around her throat, and I was squeezing—”

Werner Herzog

Of Gods and Grizzlies

Table of Contents

Introduction 3

I. Herzog’s vision: Aesthetics and Ecstatic Truth 5

II. Centerpiece: Ecstatic Truth and the place of Grizzly Man 7

III. Timothy Treadwell: The man and the metaphor in Herzog’s Grizzly Man 9

IV. The Audio Tape: Herzog ensures the reception of Timothy Treadwell’s death 12

V. From Timothy Treadwell to the figures of Caspar David Friedrich 15

VI. Into a Fog: Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above a Sea of Mists 16

VII. Friedrich and the Rückenfigur 17

VIII. Men at the Precipice: Friedrich’s Chalk Cliffs on Rügen 22

IX. Spiritual Explanations of Friedrich’s compositions 24

X. Spirituality in Grizzly Man 26

Conclusion 26

Appendix 28

Bibliography 32

Introduction

Grizzly Man (2005) is filmmaker Werner Herzog’s latest contribution to his

unique catalogue of documentary films. Herzog experiments with the documentary genre

by editing together a film that is comprised chiefly of footage shot by a man unrelated to

the Discovery Docs/Lions Gate Films production. Though he steps so far out of aesthetic

control of the film, Herzog manages to secure a place for Grizzly Man among his most

personally expressive accomplishments on screen. In this way, the film also holds a

special place in the ongoing reading of Herzog’s work as a whole. One formerly popular

reading, in which Herzog is compared to German Romanticist painter Caspar David

Friedrich, is refreshed by the addition of Grizzly Man to the director’s catalogue. While

previous analyses relied upon aesthetic similarities between the two men’s compositions,

this film engages the non- aesthetic space occupied by wild nature in each man’s work

and lays the foundation for a deeper kinship—one that speaks directly to the goals of

their often dissimilar images.

Grizzly Man follows the life and death of environmental activist Timothy

Treadwell, himself an amateur documentary filmmaker. Treadwell’s great passion was

the protection of the grizzly bears of the Alaskan peninsula. For 13 summers, the last

five of which he documented on digital video, Treadwell lived in the grizzlies’ habitat of

Katmai National Park. In early October of 2002, later than Treadwell would usually stay

among them, he and girlfriend Amie Huguenard were killed and eaten by a grizzly bear.

One of Treadwell’s cameras was recording during the incident. With the lens cap on

though, only the sound was captured. Treadwell’s other film recordings, which totaled

over 100 hours, were edited by Werner Herzog into a documentary feature.

“No, I vill direct this movie,” Herzog declared when friend and Discovery

Channel producer Erik Nelson casually introduced Herzog to the project that he was

himself set to develop. 1 Herzog’s enthusiasm for the project may have originated from

the shared fascination between Treadwell and him with making films among the dangers

of wild nature. He stayed relatively well protected for this undertaking, but Herzog

carried in with him a reputation of being fearless. Before making Grizzly Man , Werner

Herzog tackled the jungles of the Amazon with Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) and

Fitzcarraldo (1982), a volcano forecasted to imminently erupt in La Soufrière (1977),

and the burning oil fields of post-war Kuwait in Lessons of Darkness (1992), to name a

few adventures.

Herzog and Treadwell differ greatly between their opinions of wild nature,

however. Treadwell lived to protect the pristine environment of Katmai from the

corruptive powers of civilization and development. Herzog’s films however, paint nature

as an antagonistic force. “I do not see wild nature as anything that harmonious and in

balance,” Herzog says towards the conclusion of his Grizzly Man narration, “I think the

common denominator is rather chaos, hostility and murder.” Herzog is wont to make this

and other personal feelings known throughout the film too, a privilege he enjoys as the

director and the narrator of Treadwell’s stock.

Like Herzog’s previous films, Grizzly Man manages to tell a true story while

unapologetically indulging Herzog’s subjective readings. As essay films, beyond simply

documentaries, Herzog’s non-fiction pieces defy the pretenses of a personally-detached

director. This was the medium of the “intellectual poem” to young George Lukács—

1 Herzog, Werner. Interview with Scott Simon, Weekend Edition , National Public Radio, WHYY

Philadelphia, 30 July 2005.

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