• Did Timothy ‘get what he deserved’, as the helicopter pilot who helped retrieve his bones a few days after he died said?
• Was Timothy committing a moral wrong by trying to ‘be a bear’ (as seems to be suggested by the curator of the museum, Sven Haakanson)?
• Manohla Dargis, in her NYTimes review: Grizzly Man ‘makes you want to grab its maker [i.e., Werner Herzog] and head off to the nearest bar to discuss man’s domination of nature and how Disney's cute critters reflect our profound alienation from the natural order.’
• Dargis: Timothy ‘traveled a familiar American path shaped by boundless optimism and an almost religious belief in the self’. Is Timothy’s story quintessentially ‘American’?
• Dargis: ‘For some, Treadwell’s death confirmed that animal activists and environmentalists are dangerous wackos’. Can you see how Timothy’s behavior and death might encourage this picture of ‘animal activists and environmentalists’? If so, is there something problematic about the making of this film (which, for a documentary, has been very popular)?
• Timothy: ‘Thank you so much for these animals, for giving me a life – I had no life. Now I have a life.’ In what sense did the animals ‘give’ Timothy ‘a life’?
• Herzog, the director: ‘I believe the common character of the universe is not harmony, but hostility, chaos, and murder.’ Does Herzog’s attitude surprise you, coming from the director of (what many might consider) a ‘nature’ film, or at least one about an iconic ‘nature’ figure like Timothy? Is Herzog right about nature/ the universe?
• Roger Ebert, in his review: ‘The documentary is an uncommon meeting between Treadwell’s loony idealism, and Herzog’s bleak worldview.’ Does Timothy ‘deserve’ Herzog as a director, as Ebert says (and what might this mean)?
• What do you think about the fact that Amy – Timothy’s girlfriend, who died with him – rarely appeared at all in his films?
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