A Fictional Documentary

After watching the first half of “Grizzly Man” I am still confused about my feelings toward Timothy Treadwell. Although we are physically watching him in videos that he shot, are we really getting to see who he was as a person? The definition of a documentary, according to Dictionary.com is “a movie that is based on or re-creating an actual event, era, life story, etc. that purports to be factually accurate and contains no fictional elements”. The most important word in this definition is purports (intends). The video intends to be factual and accurately represent Timothy’s life, but when it comes down to it, it is impossible to represent someone’s whole life and what they believed, in only an hour and forty minutes. We are only seeing the pieces of him that Werner Herzog wants us to see. From the hundreds of hours of video shot by Timothy Treadwell, Werner Herzog chose these clips to represent his life. Each video of Timothy Treadwell is place in the movie for a certain purpose: it is meant to evoke something in the person watching the video. As soon as we start to question Timothy, we are pulled back into believing in him.

As you watch the movie, you tell yourself that what you are watching is true since it is a documentary; everything in the film is an accurate portrayal of Timothy Treadwell’s life. This, however, is false. What you are seeing and feeling is what Werner Herzog wanted you to feel, and your opinion of Treadwell is what Herzog wanted it to be. Although it is impossible to fake real videos from Treadwell, it is possible to put them together in a way that gets a certain message across. There are thousands of other ways Werner Herzog could have put this movie together, however, he made it this way.  Although “Grizzly Man” is technically a documentary, we need to ask ourselves if it portrays Timothy Treadwell’s life, or a certain view of his life.