Grizzly Man: the Character Constructed by Werner Herzog

After listening to the NPR interview with Werner Herzog, I now think of the documentary a little differently. Herzog made the documentary after Treadwell had already died, meaning that the representation of Treadwell in the documentary was entirely crafted by the director. It was Herzog who sifted through the hundred hours of footage that Treadwell filmed; it was Herzog who read Treadwell's diary and interviewed his friends; most importantly, however, it was Herzog who pieced together the film, fitting in each clip meticulously and purposefully to give the audience a specific and partially artificial representation of the Grizzly Man. Because Herzog is manipulating each piece of video and information that he has collected, the audience does not see the pure Timothy Treadwell, but the Timothy Treadwell that Werner Herzog wants them to see. I think that this is a particularly interesting idea given that in his NPR interview, Herzog almost immediately refers to Treadwell as a "character" (NPR interview). This seemingly innocent word becomes loaded given the context that he is referring to a real person in a real documentary. If Herzog sees Treadwell as a character, then is he admitting that he had a hand in shaping the man that the audience perceives to be the real Timothy Treadwell? This hypothesis is also substantiated by Herzog's later acknowledgment that he often blurs the lines between documentary and feature film. Herzog admits himself that "sometimes I invent, I script" (NPR interview). So if Herzog has such a heavy hand in creating Grizzly Man the character, then it is impossible to say that the audience is getting an accurate account of the real Timothy Treadwell. Thus the real question that the viewer should be asking themselves after the film ends does not have to do with Treadwell's mental state, but with how and why Herzog manipulated Treadwell's story and the audience into believing it. Is Herzog just trying to create a good story or does he really want to accurately depict the Grizzly Man? Is he trying to honor Treadwell's memory or does he have something a little more critical to say about Treadwell's way of life?