Capturing Timothy Treadwell
When I got about a half an hour into Grizzly Man, I thought I had a handle on Timothy Treadwell, the "bear-whisperer" who spent thirteen summers unarmed among the grizzlies of Alaska until he and his girlfriend were killed and eaten by one of his bear friends. The aging eco-hippie in long silver braids, who read a letter of Treadwell's which expressed a desire to "mutually mutate" into a bear, and the Eskimo-American with the Ph.D. who warned that Treadwell had crossed a line that existed for the mutual protection of bears and humans and that his culture had always respected that line, and the helicopter pilot who dismissed Treadwell as someone who acted as though he were dealing with a bunch of people in bear suits -- all seemed to be telling essentially the same story. Treadwell was one of Melville's "pantheists," hovering above Descartian vortices, attempting to diffuse his identity across the vast spaces of nature:
. . . but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space, like Cranmer's sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over.
There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gentle rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise forever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists.
What kind of horror was it, I wonder, in which Treadwell's identity came back to him in the last moments?
Filmmaker Werner Herzog seems somewhat taken in by the romantic allure of this view of Treadwell -- without noticing or acknowledging its mostrous selfishness and its paradoxical failure of imagination. Isn't Treadwell's putative ability to imagine himself as a bear really just an inability to imagine another as other, as different from himself? And Herzog clings to the romantic notion of Treadwell even while he subsequently offers a view of Treadwell as a more conventionally screwed up person -- recovering alcoholic, possibly still a drug-user, failed actor who changed his last name and whose claim to fame was coming in second to Woody Harrelson for the part of Woody Boyd on Cheers.
Herzog also admires Treadwell as filmmaker, and, to be sure, Treadwell captured some magnificent footage of the grizzlies and other creatures he encountered in his thirteen summers in the wild, but Herzog glosses over the irony implicit in Treadwell's insistence that he was there to protect the bears and his apparently obsessive need to see himself as an actor in a drama of his own making. While later revelations about Treadwell complicated my original "take," they don't seem to have made a dent in Herzog's interpretation; indeed, Herzog continues to compare Treadwell to Thoreau and John Muir, who -- according to Herzog -- rejected civilization and the "world of people" in favor of a more authentic experience of nature. But Thoreau didn't take a film camera along when he went to the woods, and I don't think he would have even if they could have. Can you imagine Thoreau, for instance, positioning himself in the left corner of the frame, planning which bandana he is going to wear (black or "camou"?), and doing fifteen different takes of himself saying, "I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately?"
Herzog's reaction to Treadwell is rather like Treadwell's reaction to the bears; Treadwell becomes merely a creature of Werner Herzog's imagination wearing Timothy Treadwell's skin. And there's nothing wrong with that, really. Good filmmakers and artists impose their own vision on the works that they create. In the end, Grizzly Man is not about the bears, and Herzog understands that, but it's also not really about Timothy Treadwell -- and I'm not sure whether Herzog understands that quite as clearly.
. . . but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space, like Cranmer's sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over.
There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gentle rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise forever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists.
What kind of horror was it, I wonder, in which Treadwell's identity came back to him in the last moments?
Filmmaker Werner Herzog seems somewhat taken in by the romantic allure of this view of Treadwell -- without noticing or acknowledging its mostrous selfishness and its paradoxical failure of imagination. Isn't Treadwell's putative ability to imagine himself as a bear really just an inability to imagine another as other, as different from himself? And Herzog clings to the romantic notion of Treadwell even while he subsequently offers a view of Treadwell as a more conventionally screwed up person -- recovering alcoholic, possibly still a drug-user, failed actor who changed his last name and whose claim to fame was coming in second to Woody Harrelson for the part of Woody Boyd on Cheers.
Herzog also admires Treadwell as filmmaker, and, to be sure, Treadwell captured some magnificent footage of the grizzlies and other creatures he encountered in his thirteen summers in the wild, but Herzog glosses over the irony implicit in Treadwell's insistence that he was there to protect the bears and his apparently obsessive need to see himself as an actor in a drama of his own making. While later revelations about Treadwell complicated my original "take," they don't seem to have made a dent in Herzog's interpretation; indeed, Herzog continues to compare Treadwell to Thoreau and John Muir, who -- according to Herzog -- rejected civilization and the "world of people" in favor of a more authentic experience of nature. But Thoreau didn't take a film camera along when he went to the woods, and I don't think he would have even if they could have. Can you imagine Thoreau, for instance, positioning himself in the left corner of the frame, planning which bandana he is going to wear (black or "camou"?), and doing fifteen different takes of himself saying, "I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately?"
Herzog's reaction to Treadwell is rather like Treadwell's reaction to the bears; Treadwell becomes merely a creature of Werner Herzog's imagination wearing Timothy Treadwell's skin. And there's nothing wrong with that, really. Good filmmakers and artists impose their own vision on the works that they create. In the end, Grizzly Man is not about the bears, and Herzog understands that, but it's also not really about Timothy Treadwell -- and I'm not sure whether Herzog understands that quite as clearly.
posted by Kate Marie | 9:41 AM | Permalink
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5 comments
5 Comments:
KM, I can sum this up in fewer words. I HATED THAT MOVIE WITH A PASSION. My wife and I watched it with jaws agape. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I thought that it was a send up. . sort of like Best In Show does the grizzlies. The idiot couldn't have been eaten soon enough to plese me. What a self important delusional knucklehead. Darwin Rules!
And while I'm at it. . . how about another movie. . "Lord Of the Grizzleys". The set up. . that preening, stomping, headband wearing Michael Flatley does Riverdance in Alaska and gets eaten by a Grizzley. I'm pitching it at Warner Brothers tomorrow. I see George Clooney in the lead.
I think to some extent we all cast ourselves as the heroes in dramas of our own making, but for most of us it's not a particularly unhealthy or dangerous coping mechanism because we face numerous reminders that we're not the center of the universe--from co-workers and store clerks on a daily basis and sometimes, in more profound ways, when we attend weddings or funerals, visit friends in distant places, or spend time in the unfamiliar workplaces of family and friends. For that reason, if someone is already inclined to be delusionally self-centered, I can't imagine a worse place for him than in the woods, away from all other human beings.
Stewdog, I think you had the same reaction to the movie as Wonderdog and Sadeeq did. My reaction was more complicated. I don't think it was in the least a great movie (I haven't read the reviews, but I had a general sense that it was very well reviewed), but I liked watching it -- partly because of the grizzlies, partly out of perverse fascination, and partly because I kind of like (but dont' love) Werner Herzog. Treadwell was definitely not sympathetic. I would contrast Grizzly Man with American Movie (have you seen that?), where the "protagonist," while not really a sterling character, is actually fairly sympathetic, in a weird way.
Jeff, great point. Going out to the woods *was* the worst thing that Treadwell could have done. What's weird, though, and what I didn't really have time to comment on, was that he took his girlfriend with him the last two summers he was there, even while he was filming himself commenting on how seriously alone he was out there.
I'm with Stewdog. I had no sympathy for Treadwell and, beyond that, a genuine dislike for him. God help me but I felt a sense of "he had that coming" when he met his demise.
Funny you should mention that he was possibly still a drug-user, KMa. If you take away that breathtaking landscape and the beauty of the bears, what you're left with metaphorically is merely a messed up guy continually injecting himself beyond all reasonable limits with a dangerous drug. Those bears were the same escape to Treadwell as the heroin is to the junkie on skid row. Both Treadwell and the junkie are just as insane, self-abusive, craven, and irrational. Like many of those deranged junkies, Treadwell is just another pathetic overdose story.
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