Grizzly Man (2005)

User Rating:

7.9/10   

Director:

Werner Herzog

Writer:

Werner Herzog (written by)

Release Date:

7 December 2005 (France)

Genre:

Documentary | Biography

Tagline:

In nature, there are boundaries.

Plot:

A devastating and heartrending take on grizzly bear activists Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard, who were killed in October of 2003 while living among grizzlies in Alaska.

Plot Keywords:

Bear | Grizzly Bear | Alaska | Death | Animal

Awards:

12 wins & 6 nominations

Cast

Werner Herzog	...	Himself / Narrator / Interviewer (voice)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Carol Dexter	...	Herself, Treadwell's mother
Val Dexter	...	Himself, Treadwell's father
Sam Egli	...	Himself (Egli Air Haul)
Franc G. Fallico	...	Himself (Coroner)
Willy Fulton	...	Himself, pilot
Marc Gaede	...	Himself (Ecologist)
Marnie Gaede	...	Herself (Ecologist)
Sven Haakanson Jr.	...	Himself, Alutiiq Museum Director
Amie Huguenard	...	Herself (archive footage)
David Letterman	...	Himself (archive footage)
Jewel Palovak	...	Herself
Kathleen Parker	...	Herself (Close Friend)
Warren Queeney	...	Himself (Actor, Close Friend)
Timothy Treadwell	...	Himself (archive footage)
Larry Van Daele	...	Himself, bear biologist

Directed by
Werner Herzog

Writing credits
Werner Herzog		(written by)

Produced by
Kevin L. Beggs	....	executive producer (as Kevin Beggs)
Alana Berry	....	associate producer
Billy Campbell	....	executive producer
Phil Fairclough	....	executive producer
Andrea Meditch	....	executive producer
Erik Nelson	....	executive producer
Erik Nelson	....	producer
Tom Ortenberg	....	executive producer
Jewel Palovak	....	co-executive producer

Original Music by
Richard Thompson

Cinematography by
Peter Zeitlinger		(director of photography)

Film Editing by
Joe Bini

Production Management
Don Baer	....	executive in charge of production: Discovery Channel Inc.
Randall M. Boyd	....	post-production supervisor (as Randall Boyd)
Jessica DeJong	....	production manager
Dave Harding	....	executive in charge of production
Tom Koykka	....	production manager
Jane Root	....	executive in charge of production: Discovery Channel Inc.

Sound Department
Ken King	....	sound
Michael Klinger	....	sound post-production
Spencer Palermo	....	sound
D.D. Stenehjem	....	sound post-production

Camera and Electrical Department
Erik Söllner	....	assistant camera (as Erik Sollner)
Amie Huguenard	....	camera operator: archive footage (uncredited)
Timothy Treadwell	....	camera operator: archive footage (uncredited)

Editorial Department
Michael Anthony Brown	....	editorial assistant
Herrianne Cayabyab	....	on-line editor
Maya Hawke	....	assistant editor
Adarsh Kaushal	....	editorial assistant
Brian Patterson	....	editorial assistant
David W. Ryan	....	editorial assistant
Chris Camerote	....	assistant editor (uncredited)
David Foulk	....	editorial assistant (uncredited)
Spencer Hecox	....	on-line editor (uncredited)
David Taylor	....	assistant editor (uncredited)

Music Department
Danielle DeGruttola	....	musician: cello
John Hanes	....	musician: percussion and drums
Stephen Hart	....	score recording engineer
Henry Kaiser	....	music producer
Jim O'Rourke	....	musician: piano and guitar
Damon Smith	....	musician: acoustic bass
Damon Smith	....	musician: bass
Richard Thompson	....	music arranger
Richard Thompson	....	musician: guitar and bass
Henry Kaiser	....	musician: guitar (uncredited)

Production Companies

• Discovery Docs
• Real Big Production

Distributors

• Atlantic Film (2006) (Sweden) (theatrical)
• A-Film Distribution (2005) (Netherlands) (theatrical)
• Cinema Mondo (2006) (Finland) (theatrical)
• Lions Gate Films (2005) (USA) (theatrical)
• Madman Entertainment (2005) (Australia) (theatrical)
• Discovery Channel (2005) (USA) (TV)
• Madman Entertainment (2006) (Australia) (DVD)
• Madman Entertainment (2006) (New Zealand) (all media)
• Maple Pictures (2005) (Canada) (DVD)
• Revolver Entertainment (2005) (UK) (all media)
• Universum Film (UFA) (2008) (Germany) (DVD)

Other Companies

• Falco Ink.  publicity
• Fantasy Studios  recorded at
• Tree Falls  sound post-production

MPAA:

Rated R for language.

Runtime:

USA:103 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Netherlands:AL | UK:15 | Canada:14A (Alberta/British Columbia/Ontario) | Canada:G (Québec) | Sweden:Btl | Australia:M | Finland:K-7 | Singapore:NC-16 | USA:R | South Africa:13L

Filming Locations:

Katmai National Park, Alaska, USA

Company:

Discovery Docs

Trivia:

During a BBC interview about the film, Werner Herzog was shot with an air rifle. The interview was resumed indoors and at the end Herzog was encouraged to check his wound. Though there was "a bruise the size of a snooker ball, with a hole in it." Herzog declared "It was not a significant bullet. I am not afraid."

Quotes:

Himself, pilot: [singing along with song] Now the long horns are gone And the drovers are gone The Comanche's are gone And the outlaws are gone Now Quantro is gone Stan Watie is gone And the lion is gone And the Red Wolf is gone
Himself, pilot: And Treadwell is gone...

Movie Connections:

References "Love Connection" (1983)

Soundtrack:

Coyotes

A life both tragic and silly

For thirteen years "grizzly man" Timothy Treadwell went to an Alaskan wildlife refuge on Kodiak Island and pitched his tent alone -- and the last couple of times with a girlfriend (Amy Huguenard) -- spending the summers among huge grizzly bears. The rest of the year he went to schools and "free of charge" showed his films of the bears and his exploits. When the last of his summers drew to a close he and his girlfriend died among the grizzlies as he'd always known -- and even David Letterman had pointed out -- that he might. Filmmaker Werner Herzog, longtime student of crazy eccentric loners on heroic doomed quests, has taken on Treadwell's life and personality as the subject of a rare and powerful documentary.

At the heart of "Grizzly Man" are Herzog's selective cullings from film Treadwell left behind chronicling both the bears and his own demons. Herzog has added interviews with women in Treadwell's life, with his parents, with the pilot who took him to and from his campgrounds and later found his and his girlfriend's remains, and with Franc Fallico, the unusually sympathetic and sensitive -- and perhaps a bit looney -- coroner who examined these. The director has bound it all together with his own frank and idiosyncratic narration. The result is a rare sober look at the more delusional aspects of man's relations to wild animals.

At times Herzog by implication sympathetically links Treadwell with his former principle star and sparring partner, the late mad eccentric actor Klaus Kinski. Like Kinski Treadwell had tantrums on a film set. But his set was the outdoors and there was no director to spar with; his sparring partners were nature and his own troubled psyche. Nature contained, of course, living witnesses, chief among them the grizzly bears he knows can kill him. He repeatedly tells the camera how much he loves them. He loves the gentler, smaller foxes near whose dens he pitches his tents during the second halves of his summer sojourns. He tells the camera you must be firm with the bears, and he says he knows how to handle them, even though he also repeatedly says he knows he may die there. He is a gambler. Is he a complex man, or merely a confused one? Is he brave, or just foolhardy? What is his purpose in spending all this time among the grizzlies? Is he gathering information, or taking refuge among creatures he need not please, only keep a safe distance from (though he continually comes closer to bears than the park rules and good sense require)? He has a soft sissified manner and voice and even says he wishes he were gay. But he also rants and rages embarrassingly and tiresomely against unseen enemies, poachers, sightseers, rangers, hunters, park officials, the whole urban settled world he runs from to this world he idealizes and blindly sees as perfect. As Herzog notes, Treadwell sought to disregard nature's cruelty, and any time it was in his face -- as when the bears were starving in a dry spell and began eating their own young -- he sought to manipulate nature to eliminate the ugliness. He faults not the bears but the rain gods.

Young Timothy according to his parents was an ordinary boy who loved animals from childhood and got a diving scholarship to college. But he injured his back and quit college and he drank and when he went to LA to act and didn't get a part on Cheers he "spiraled down." He never had a lasting relationship with a woman and the drinking became serious and constant. In vain he tried programs, meetings, self-discipline -- but the drinking went on and was killing him. Finally he got sober for the grizzlies and the foxes. He decided to devote his life to them and he pledged to them that he would be clean and healthy. It was a miracle. Yet he remained not only manic-depressive but passive-aggressive, as his alternations between gentle declarations of love of the animals and his spewing of vitriol against the civilized world attest.

Treadwell's soft-voiced declarations of love and sweetness among the grizzlies would be beautiful -- if such behavior, in a world of extreme physical risk, surrounded by limber lumbering beasts with great teeth and long claws, while preening for the camera with caps and bandanas and golden locks in a dozen alternate takes -- were not criminally silly and irresponsible. Herzog hides none of this in his portrait, which is both sympathetic and ruthless.

As the years passed the Grizzly Man found transitions back to civilization harder and harder to make. On the last occasion, an airport official infuriated him by questioning the validity of his ticket and he turned around with his girlfriend -- who was afraid of bears! -- and returned to the "maze," the most dangerous of his summer campgrounds because it wasn't in the open where the bears could see him and steer clear but among their burrows and the brush. It was later than he ever stayed and the bears he knew and had names for were hibernating now, replaced by new unknown and more hostile and nasty animals. He must also have been more desperate, perhaps more careless? We see the bear that probably devoured him and the woman.

Herzog has access to everything, even an audio-only tape of Timothy and Amy's truly grizzly death. He spares us, though.

As Herzog begins his film by stating, Timothy Treadwell crossed a line between wild animal and human that should never be crossed. This is a line so many other touchy-feely "nature" and "wildlife" films cross. See "The March of the Penguins" and you'll have a prime example. "Grizzly Man" isn't meant to be about grizzlies. It's about men who cross that line -- who willfully misunderstand nature for their own misguided reasons, to serve their own dysfunctional needs.