After watching the short clip from the documentary, I went into it with an idea of how I thought I would react to the documentary. I thought Timothy Treadwell came across as very confident, to the point of being cocky, but very passionate about the bears. There was one part of the NPR interview that resonated with me, and it was when Herzog said that he disagrees with Treadwell's approach to protecting the bears. He explains how Treadwell gets up close and personal with the bears and talks about and to the bears in somewhat of a "baby" voice. I agree with Herzog that you should love the bears by treating them with respect and keeping your distance, almost the opposite of what Treadwell does. I do think that Treadwell is genuine in his feelings about the bears.
The NPR interview also made me question the accuracy of the documentary, especially when Herzog says he doesn't make a distinction between documentaries and feature films. Therefore, I'm going into the movie with the idea that aspects of this film have been manipulated to lead us to see Treadwell's story a certain way. Although documentaries are often considered factual and unbiased, I think ones like "Grizzly Man", in which an individual's story is being told, are subjective and manipulated to the director's liking. It makes perfect sense, but it is something I have never really considered because I trusted that the director would not manipulate the story, and make the documentary as objective as possible. I'm sure many directors do maintain that validity, but I have my hesitations about "Grizzly Man".
Treadwell was insane! No if, ands or buts about it. To [someone's] point, the bears should have been shown love through respect and distance. There was no need to get involved. Already these bears were under protection from an US agency; a much mightier force than just one lonely man.
ReplyDeleteOne particular moment of the NPR interview that caught me particularly off-guard was when Herzog said something along the lines of "I script some of my (documentary) movies". After watching the first days worth of Grizzly Man, I am going to confidently speculate that much of that documentary was scripted (and poorly, at that fact). Film, especially documentaries, is an art-form and therefore is already subject to the artistic stylings of the producers, director(s), and editors; there is no need for a screen-play to be added in. It made the film appear fake and severely undermined the film. Herzog is a world-renowned name in the field of Film, but I think he severely underperformed, to your point Siob, and I too have my hesitations about this film.
If Herzog admits to scripting some of his documentaries can we trust the candidness of the information? While we do have film from Treadwell himself which is unaltered and of his own recording, we still must assume Herzog chose the clips that would support his beliefs and views about Treadwell. While some may call it artistic styling I would argue bias is a better word. While I don't debate that Treadwell was out of the ordinary, it is difficult to obtain an uninhibited perspective since we are encountering this all second hand through the eyes of Herzog. I don't aim to argue with either of your points but I would like to draw a bit more attention to the possibility that the lens we look through may be changing the way we see Timothy Treadwell and his story.
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