I find it very interesting that over
and over Herzog makes the statement that Timothy Treadwell’s legacy will be his
photos and videos which captured Grizzly bears in their daily interactions.
This interests me because, thanks to Herzog, Treadwell’s legacy has become the Grizzly
Man documentary. Furthermore, the focus of the documentary is not Treadwell’s
footage. Although it plays throughout a good deal of the film, the viewer is
led to focus on Tim’s personal life and mental health.
This upsets me as it seems as if the
people who supposedly respected Timothy’s work (Herzog, Palovak, and other
contributing friends) actually became so enveloped in Tim as a character that
they forgot the real purpose of his time in the wild. They either forgot
(unlikely since the film was painstakingly edited and scripted), or they simply
decided to move the focus to the opposite of what Tim would have desired. They
focused on the human; not the bears.
Is this a business move to create
more buzz around the film? I believe that it is. The only remaining question in
my mind is: was it worth it to sacrifice the integrity of Treadwell’s work if
it turned out to mean that more people actually saw the documentary and
therefore saw his footage? Logic-wise, I agree with the decision, but, morally,
I believe that the decision to focus on Treadwell was disrespectful and
insensitive.
You bring up a really insightful point and I agree with you that it seems sort of couter-intuitive that Tredwell's footage is being used for most of the documentary, but the documentary is not about what is shown. I attribute this to Herzog using Tredwell's footage as a construct for creating the "Tredwell character," similar to O'Brien using inner stories and characters as constucts for his overall book.
ReplyDeleteI also like the point you raise in the last paragraph because I think that is a very complex idea because we dont know, and will never know, what Herzog's true goal or purpose was with this film. But I agree with you in that it quickly turned into a film about the humans, as opposed to Tredwell's purpose of being about the bears.