Bear Neccessities

I'm being interviewed by frickin Arnold Schwarzenegger!

I managed to catch, after numerous Metro delays, the sneak to Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man. Herzog has been making films for well over thirty years. He's know for such films as Aguirre, Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, and a modern retelling of Nosferatu. Considered one of Germany's best directors, he's also directed his fair share of documentaries.

Most documentaries are, well, boring. This is why they never quite caught on with the viewing public. This began to change with folks like Michael Moore, and to a lesser extent, Errol Morris. Suddenly, a spate of very good documentaries have been released, and audiences are there to watch it.

Control Room, for example, while nominally about the behind-the-scenes production of Al-Jazeera, long demonized by the Bush Administration, but sharing more in common with CNN and Fox than one might expect from this Arab news station, ends up being the story of Lt. Josh Rushing, who was picked to represent the military to media concerning US actions in Iraq.

Unlike most people in his position, Rushing does the unthinkable. He thinks. He tries to understand why the Arab world hates the US, and his education comes from those who work in Al-Jazeera, including the brilliantly acerbic and sarcastic, Hassan Ibrahim, who suprise, surprise, is married to someone Jewish, and calls him "bubalah". In the end, Rushing's story is the compelling one, because it gives some hope that Americans can get past the propaganda, and really see what's going on.

Other fascinating documentaries include March of the Penguins. You know penguins live in the South Pole, but do you realize just how harsh life is there? What are these insane birds doing? How the heck did they evolve to do what they do?

Upcoming is The Aristocrats, about the most offensive joke told in the US, and the meaning of comedy, pushing the edge, and censorship.

Perhaps the brilliance of Grizzly Man is that the big "secret" is revealed right away. Timothy Treadwell, bear lover, is killed by a bear. Not only he, but his girlfriend too.

The story then winds back to discuss the life of Treadwell through a series of interviews. While Treadwell is enough of a personality to drive a film, Herzog also shows a pilot, a former girlfriend, his parents, and the coroner, who tell about the last moments of their lives, recorded on audio, as Treadwell pleads for his girlfriend to leave as he is being mauled. She refuses, hitting the bear with a frying pan, until she too is mauled.

Unlike most brilliant documentaries, say, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, where you don't even hear the documentarians talk, just all those involved, Herzog makes himself a character in this story, relating his filmmaking to the filmmaking of Treadwell, interjecting himself at key scenes, for example, when he listens to the audio of Treadwell and his girlfriend's last moments with Treadwell's former girlfriend, Jewel Palovak, he has to stop it, the agonizing sounds too much for Werner to bear (no pun intended---ok, pun intended).

And yet, the scene, if anything, seems played up to see Palovak's reaction, which is, of course, eventually to cry. He tells her, in his best Ah-nuld, that she must never listen to the audio, she should burn the audio, and never see the photos of death, and she says "I won't, Werner". At times, Herzog seems over-the-top manipulative.

Yet, as a film, Grizzly Man has plenty of odd touches, from discussing Treadwell's mental condition (bipolar, at times, sweet, at times angry). Treadwell himself comes across like Carson Kressley, both in looks, and in the way he talks, even pondering how life would be better if he were gay (but, no he "likes girls").

As serious as this film sounds, Treadwell himself is a funny man. His mood swings lead to a five minute rant about the park service, who he grew seriously paranoid about. F-this, and f-that, and yet Herzog manages to comment in between, giving the rant a better effect, and then, Treadwell, returning back to calm, talking about how great it is to spend time with the bears.

Originally, Palovak was planning to use the footage and make her own film, but Herzog, being something of a force of nature, compelled her to let him tell the story, and she did. In the end, it's hard to imagine her doing a better job, despite the obvious presence of Werner himself.

Even though Grizzly Man is entertaining as well as educating about a man in search of meaning to his life, a man who wants to be someone, who feels alone in the world despite, in fact, really needing women in his life, it is not, in my opinion, the best documentary where the narrator plays a role.

That, I'd say, belongs to Agnes Varda, Cinévardaphoto, in particular, the middle segment about Ydessa Hendeles, a curator in Canada, who has the largest collection of teddy bear photos known. Varda, herself omnipresent in the film, comes across as, yes, a woman making a documentary, but can place herself as a prototypical visitor to the museum, wondering how these photos were made, how they were classified, how strange a woman Ydessa is, and addressing a question that has fascinated her: how real are documentaries? How real are these images?

In combination with the first segment about a man, a boy, both nude, by a dead goat, on a beach, and their recollections of this moment, Varda explores the reality of images, of pictures, and really the truth that we think we get when we photograph a moment in time, and yet how an image can become separated from the people who were captured, from the time that it was taken, simply because people have forgotten the circumstances which it's happened.

Varda thus is searching for answers and a different film, distinct from Hendeles, and can combine those two parts to make a more compelling film, while Herzog seems intent on making himself a co-star in this film about man vs. nature, and ultimately, man vs. himself.