When I heard the definition of the word “documentary” in class, I was kind of pissed.
Documentary = “based on or re-creating an actual event, era, life story,etc., that purports to be factually accurate and contains no fictional elements” (from dictionary.com)
Excuse me?? PURPORTS???? I guess hearing this made me take Grizzly Man less seriously because I now know that Herzog likes to “stylize documentaries.” I’ll come back around to this.
I also think it’s interesting that Herzog doesn’t see nature as “anything that is harmonious and in balance,” but instead sees it as “chaos, hostility, and murder.” This caught my attention because we typically see nature, and the earth, as in a sort of equilibrium where everything is generally at a balance except for during an extinction or global warming, etc. I suppose that in the context of this documentary nature could be seen as hostile and chaotic, but I don’t think that that is the nature of nature itself. In this case, it’s completely Timothy’s fault. I can’t help but feel bad for him because he either thought that this lifestyle was what was best for him at the time, or is how he wanted to get famous. It’s tragic either way, but he also brought it upon himself.
Speaking of his reasons for living this way… While watching Grizzly Man I tried not to make snap judgments because, to my prior understanding of a documentary, this was something that a real person went through and I wanted to try and be empathetic to his situation. So at the end of class when people were commenting on how crazy Timothy was and how he was doing all of this for fame, I felt bad because he did ultimately die very brutally whether or not he was trying to make a show out of it, and I didn't want to think these things about someone who has died from it, and who may have had a mental illness or something like that. But now that I know that much of this could have been stylized, I have no idea what to think but I’m excited to watch the rest of it.
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