Herzog's Truth

            While listening to the NPR interview with director Werner Herzog, I began to question how accurately Timothy Treadwell was portrayed in Grizzly Man. Herzog clearly had an emotional investment in this documentary. He also had a heavy hand in its production. After all, he directed, wrote, narrated, and starred in the documentary. Because of this, I don’t think we’ll get to see the “real” Timothy Treadwell in Tuesday’s class; we’ll see Timothy Treadwell through Werner Herzog’s eyes.

            Herzog says himself, “I’ve always looked for something much deeper, an ecstatic truth—the ecstasy of truth—some illumination in my feature films and in my documentaries.” While he denies exercising artistic license in this film, I don’t think Herzog can help it. He’s trying to let the audience see the Timothy Treadwell that he has gotten to know through Treadwell’s videos, diaries, and letters. For Herzog, there’s a difference between truth and fact. He desperately wants the audience to feel something, and connect with Treadwell on a personal and emotional level. It’s not all about factual accuracy.

            I connected Herzog’s intentions with the intentions of Tim O’Brien, the character in The Things They Carried. To quote O’Brien, Herzog wants to portray “the hard and exact truth as it seemed.” But the problem is this: just as many of the characters O’Brien writes about are now dead, Timothy Treadwell is also dead. Herzog can’t depict the truth as it seemed to Treadwell; he can only depict his own interpretation of it. He wants to tell us a story.