A Documentary?

“Grizzly Man”, directed by Werner Herzog, is supposed to be an unbiased story of Timothy Treadwell living in Katmai National Park trying to save the grizzly bears. Yet, through the film’s gruesome “acting” and uncomfortable collections of obviously staged scenes, this “documentary” felt more like Herzog trying to insert his opinion in the account rather than reporting the truth of the Treadwell story. For example, the coroner who explains how Treadwell and his girlfriend died is trying to make the descriptions more dramatic and is awkwardly looking at the camera after his spiel is over. This is obvious acting, rather than saying the actual truth. When Herzog interviews Treadwell’s parents, they seem to be cold and distant. The mother grabs Timothy’s bear, which seems to unpleasantly push the subject of the grizzlies. For some reason, the father is made to look odd because he keeps his sunglasses on in the house and shows no emotion to his son’s death.  

            In addition to these weird interviews, Herzog himself inserts his opinion throughout the documentary, which makes the documentary quite biased. In one scene, Herzog states that Timothy would feel a certain way, and how he disagreed with Timothy’s thought. This puts words into Timothy’s mouth, and we cannot take this explanation as the definite truth. As the viewers, we have to take Herzog’s opinion with a grain of salt. How would he know what Timothy was thinking at that time? This documentary is more like a feature film because it breaks the rules of being an unbiased documentary, and inserts bias to increase the entertainment factor.