I find it funny that both Ebert and Dargis see to compare Treadwll to Kinski's character of Fitzcarraldo from another of Herzog's films appropriately titled Fitzcarraldo. It just so happens that through the duration of the film I was thinking the very same thing myself. Having not previously been exposed to Herzog's non-fiction work I found it profound that a lot of similar themes run through not only his fiction but his non-fiction features.
Herzog is notorious for doing character studies that follow characters who search for an impossible end without always rationally considering the means. Treadwill is not exception but I think presenting him as insane in the film is very biased. Time and time again we hear Treadwell remark on how dangerous his expedition is, and how he will die for his goals, but at the end it seems as if we don't get a good sense of what Treadwill sees in the bears. Treadwill was making a film about the bears but most of their footage has been cut out entirely.
Having watch the Grizzly Man diaries, a TV show on animal planet based around the same set of footage, I can tell you that Treadwell spent time running with bears, wrestling with the bears; he had reason to call them his friends. In the film he is portrayed in crazy, but I think in reality he is far from it.
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Two very interesting points, Adam: first, there is the question of what footage is left out. And you're right, presumably some straight footage of the bears is. What's left in *may* tend to encourage the loony portrait of Timothy. Which is the second point you make, which I would expand upon by saying: there is almost always an incentive toward the sensational in a documentary (or other kind of) film. Even if the footage of Timothy is 'real' footage, if we tend to see the more 'interesting' footage -- where he says amusing stuff, acts weird, etc -- in a higher proportion than would be reflected in his footage as a whole, then we get a certain picture of him that may be less than accurate.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I don't know and will probably never know the extent of the footage that Herzog had access to. And I like, and generally trust, Herzog. But your cautionary points are very well taken, because it would be (and is for some) so easy to write Timothy off.
I agree with you Adam that the film seems very biased toward making Timothy seem like he is insane. They took his thoughts and words from a time of loneliness and turned them against him when he was just doing what he thought to be a noble mission, to save the bears.
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