Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsA visionary madman captures a madman's vision
Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2006
Merriam-Webster's definition of megalomania is "1 : a mania for great or grandiose performance; 2 : a delusional mental disorder that is marked by infantile feelings of personal omnipotence and grandeur," which I quote to support the thesis that there is no better filmmaker to capture the strange, lunatic story of Timothy Treadwell's life with the wild grizzly bears of Alaska, than the strange, lunatic storyteller, Werner Herzog, whose lunacy is at least redeemed by a passionate genius which has, in recent years, been mellowing into a kind of philosophical benevolence. Sadly, there was no such personal redemption for the desperately out-of-sync Treadwell, who, along with his girlfriend, the elusive and deliberately invisible Amie Huguenard, died torn to shreds by one of the bears he professed to be studying. Yet in the hands of this extraordinary filmmaker, who despite his earlier great work may just now be reaching genuine mastery, the story of Treadwell's life has transcended the facts amply described in these reviews, and become a tale not about the dangers of living with wild bears, but rather the dangers of living with a malfunctioning psyche. Unafraid to show us the full range of madness that described Timothy Treadwell, Herzog, for many years his fellow in madness, shines an unflinching light into the darkness that drove this young man out into the wilderness where his psychosis could become a kind of ecstasy and his delusions an unfettered stretching of the spirit. I cannot imagine any other filmmaker able to accomplish such a feat.
Timothy Treadwell left a world in which he could not function most likely due to untreated Bipolar Disorder, and for 13 summers went to the Alaskan peninsula where a large area of land has been set aside as refuge for Grizzlies, and in violation of the Park Service and other governmental authorities, not to mention common sense, set himself up as a "protector" of bears who had no need of either a "kind warrior," to "serve them", nor a "samurai" to "challenge them." For the last five years he had a video camera with him, with which he carefully crafted his image as the "only protector" these bears had, a man willing to live and die for them, a scientist, a naturalist (despite an appalling ignorance and complete lack of even the most rudimentary collecting of data or preparatory research). While he captured some of the most beautiful and unstudied footage of the grizzlies ever filmed, as the years passed the camera increasingly became a confessional medium, and in evermore disturbing monologues on everything from his failure with women (despite his self-professed sexual prowess), to his extraordinary courage in the face of overwhelming odds and dangers, constantly describing himself as the bravest human being on the planet, the only one who has successfully won the respect of the grizzlies and therefore survived, "all alone," the most "dangerous place on the planet, the Grizzly Maze," we watch the intensity of his delusions and paranoia growing. When he notices a smiley face drawn on a rock, one's first thought is that someone who has heard of him is saying "hi," but this little face on a rock on the beach is seen by him as a cleverly backwards, upside-down threat against his life. His grandiosity is, as Herzog says, incandescent; he burns in his madness, something I do not find funny, but frightening. As apparently the real victim of this tragedy, Amie Huguenard, did too, stating that he seemed "hell-bent on destruction." Herzog's question seems to be, "Where does madness end and transcendence begin?" Only in Treadwell's gorgeous footage does any answer seem to lie.
Treadwell's greatest need and gravest error of judgment is revealed in the way he anthropomorphized these wild creatures, at times to a truly astonishing degree, describing the bears, foxes, bees, and even flies in entirely human terms, projecting upon them his own needs and emotions. Giving 12-ft tall grizzlies such petting-zoo names as "Mr. Chocolate" and "STabitha," and naming a fox after himself, so disconnected from reality is he that he genuinely believes they are his friends, believe him to be theirs; is entirely certain that they love him and know he loves them (something he tells them constantly, often in great fits of sobbing).
But what fascinates most is how skewed a vision of the natural world he and Herzog share--Treadwell sees the bears' indifference to his presence as affectionate acceptance and their occasional hostility to him as a deliberate challenge that must be met with strength so that they will respect him, while Herzog just as readily ascribes human terms to the same behaviors ("boredom" and "cruelty"). The only difference is that Treadwell bathes the natural world in a rosy-glassed romantic light, while Herzog sees only "chaos, destruction, and murder." When he sees the footage of the very old and desperately starving bear that is believed to have attacked Treadwell and Ms. Huguenard, he refers to him as a "murderer," a human term implying deliberation and formed intent. As the film progresses, Herzog is as self-revelatory as Treadwell, and we end up with portraits of two megalomaniacs, each making films more about themselves than anything else. Treadwell is the center of his film, not the bears, just as Herzog increasingly becomes the central character of his "documentary." As the camera was running, lens cap on, there is an audio track of the entire attack, and he listens to it under headphones (theretofore only heard for necessary reasons by the coroner) and while I don`t feel it should have been played for us, it is odd that when the tape is played, it is Herzog we are watching as he listens privately while Treadwell's oldest friend watches him shake, clearly deeply disturbed by what he hears. He then tells her that she should destroy the tape, never listen to it, and it while this is sound advice, it seems somehow inappropriate that he should have, through the making of this film, become the most important witness to this event, and the one to decide how those closest to his subject should handle such matters. As Herzog enters more deeply Treadwell's world, he seems more and more inclined to the role of keeper of the keys, rather than filmmaker.
In a disconcerting segment, Herzog follows the graphic description of the cleanup of the bodies of the two humans from inside the bear which ate them with Treadwell's footage of an extraordinarily ferocious fight between two males, so that we cannot help but imagine the attack on two small people as we watch these enormous bears in full battle mode. The scene becomes more surreal as afterwards, Treadwell enters the frame to both talk to us about the intensity of the fight, then to have a relaxed, on-camera chat with the losing bear, even reassuring the vanquished giant that he, Timothy, has no designs on the female in question. This never strikes him as absurd, nor does he see the bear as oblivious to his words of wisdom. Having failed with humans, he insists that the bears stand in as companions, the foxes as playmates. Deliberately camping next to two fox dens, he finds that they abide his presence, even allowing him to pet and play with them, and he calls them "sweet" when they permit this. But the loving taping of, and baby-talking to, a fox kit who has grabbed his baseball cap to play with, turns ugly when the kit runs off to its den with this "vital" belonging, while Treadwell gives chase, yelling, swearing at, and threatening the kit in frustrated rage. Suddenly the good baby is a bad one, and nowhere in the scene is there any indication that Treadwell understands that foxes are not humans (or even little dogs) biddable to his command. Despite his claim of being out there to "study" the animals, he clearly knows nothing about them, either of their behavior, or even that fox babies are not called "pups," but rather "kits."
He weeps over a kit who has been killed by wolves (he thinks), and describes the wolves as celebratory in their kill, and what is clearest is his inability to see that death is as much a part of nature as is life, that animals do not hold celebrations when they kill either to eat, to ensure procreation, to hold their own territory against intruders. And neither does Herzog see this as balance, but as horror. Each is entirely projecting his own prejudices on what is simply the emotionless cycles of nature, a common problem with megalomaniacs, who genuinely lose it when faced with proof that they are not omnipotent; the Marquis de Sade also hated Nature, "that passionless spectator that can bear everything," hence both Treadwell on his tapes, and Herzog in "Burden of Dreams," both expressing the need to "conquer" nature. This problem is seen most clearly when Treadwell screams into the camera that it MUST rain, begging the gods to send rain because "Tabitha is eating her babies!" That animals sometimes die, sometimes kill one another, seems to be news to Treadwell. One wonders where he thought hamburgers came from.
The one voice of quiet sanity comes from the single Aleut that Herzog interviewed (too briefly), who explained what respect for bears is in the Native American view, that it means understanding who people are, who the bears are, and not impinging on their territory or trying to "be" one. In his opinion, Treadwell's actions were the opposite of "protective," were in fact disrespectful and ultimately dangerous to the bears, as a bear who is used to people is in danger of getting hurt or killed. The Indian vision of Nature has nothing to do with Treadwell's pretty illusions or with Herzog`s notions of hostility, but rather with everything holding its place, fulfilling its purpose--all functioning without any unnecessary interference from humans. The People have always taken only what was needed; to kill even one creature more than necessary is criminal; even Treadwell's attempt to influence the salmon run so that "his" bears can eat would be considered deeply inappropriate. True harmony can only occur when humans maintain a very light touch. Treadwell's discovery of what he thinks is a dead bee (ignorance about what he calls the "pollen thing" on full display), his rage at a fly who is trying to do its job laying eggs on the dead fox kit in order to recycle it back to the Earth is not, as he seemed to think, an evil disruption of perfection, but rather an illustration of it. Yet he swore at the fly as though it's landing on the kit's body was a personal insult directed at him, "Don't do that in front of me."
Yet, even with all of this to shake one's head at, what Herzog admires is indeed admirable: Timothy Treadwell's unique footage and his fearless self-revelation. The beauty of the wild is something Herzog has filmed repeatedly, nor has he ever attempted to pass himself off as anything but a madman. His rants in "Burden of Dreams" are every bit as uninhibited as Treadwell's rants against the evils of everything from flies to the Park Service. It is a great act of courage to bare one's soul before the world, and both of these men have done that. And it is a gift to be able to do what Herzog has done with this film: he has elevated one man's corkscrewed vision of the world and distilled it to its poetic core, even managing to imbue a cast of oddballs and outcasts with a measure of dignity. Where others see weirdoes and misfits, Herzog has always seen idiosyncricity of character and has honored it as illustrative of the range of humanity. A less judgmental man never held a camera. And clearly, despite their different points of view, Herzog empathizes with Treadwell's enormous struggle to understand and subdue his demons. Perhaps if Timothy Treadwell had lived, he would have found some way to harness them as Herzog has his, and become a fellow visionary, rather than merely a fellow madman.
And speaking of visionaries, let us not forget the exceptional score by genius Richard Thompson, whose guitar speaks to us as clearly and movingly as do Treadwell's images. Through collective improvisation Thompson and several other musicians, with producer Henry Kaiser at the helm and Herzog in the room, created a score that is minimalist yet powerful, authoritative yet playful. On the DVD there is an hour-long documentation of the sessions, called "In the Edges," appropriately enough, as that's where Thompson, Herzog, and during his lifetime, Tim Treadwell, have always lived.
