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This all tenuously leads me to Werner Herzog's documentary Grizzly Man which
was released in 2005 and is genuinely brilliant. It tells the story of
some unhinged head-case called Timothy Treadwell who thinks he's at one
with the bears until one spoils his fun and rips his fucking head clean off.
For some years, Timothy would spend his time camping out with his
man-eating chums whilst also making self-shot documentaries that allowed him to
live out his fantasy as their protector. He'd film them scavenging and
shitting, he'd film himself stroking them, and he'd also give them stupid
names like Captain Brown and Professor Chocolate-Hole or whatever. In
their review of this film, Empire Magazine described it as basically
being one long suicide note and they're not wrong. Although I don't
doubt that Timothy had a genuine love for the animals, it's also obvious
that he kind of had a few issues and there's only so long that anybodies
luck can last. He also seemed to have a hatred for our civilisation
that may hint towards why he might have preferred animals to humans and
why being eaten might not have been his biggest concern. When people
have something missing in their life, they often tend to replace it with
drugs or religion or some other kind of bullshit like that. Here however,
we witness a man who instead, and rather sadly, decided to fill his hole
with some huge fucking bears... I probably could have phrased that a bit
better.
So
basically what the film consists of is a combination of Treadwell's own
footage and Herzog's hilariously contrasting and deadpan narration.
Whereas Treadwell sees his relationship with the bears as being
meaningful and mutual, Herzog sees it in a slightly different way. I'm going to
include a pretty long quote right now but fuck it because it's
brilliant. Try and imagine hearing this delivered in a slow Bavarian
accent after hearing some loopy American rant about his love of the
animals; “In
all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed, I discover
no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming
indifference of nature. To me, there is no such thing as a secret world
of the bears. And this blank stare speaks only of a half-bored interest
in food.” In a nutshell, this quote for me perfectly sums up not only the
brilliance of this film but of every film that Herzog has ever made
whether they be documentary or not. In fact for me, I don't see a single
difference between Herzog's documentaries or his feature films with
both simply allowing him to capture his brilliantly nihilistic views on
screen. In terms of Grizzly Man alone,
I think this film was brilliantly summed up by BBC film critic Mark
Kermode who described the contrast of Treadwell's and Herzog's world
views as being like if Disney was mugged by Nietzsche.
Anyway,
like I said about Obi-Wan before, there is a time and a place for
creative license and everybody will draw the line in different places.
Documentaries are often slagged
off for playing silly buggers with the facts and Herzog's are no
exception. In fact, he's even pretty open about the aspects of his
documentaries that he's faked on the grounds that he's less interested
in the facts than making something artsy and ironically more honest.
This is the reason that his fiction and his non-fiction blends so
seamlessly into one for me. Not only do both tend to explore stories of
men staring into the abyss but no matter what the subject is, we're
always being treated to Herzog's own world view. Recently he's made
documentaries about this, cave paintings, death row and people living in
Antarctica, however in every case, I'm more interested in how the story
is told than the story itself. For example there are moments in Grizzly Man that Herzog has clearly manipulated, such as the concluding sing-along sing-song and an interview with some fucking batshit
mental pathologist. Or at least I hope the pathologist was in some way
influenced by Herzog as the guy's madness made him seem like he should be in
an early Peter Jackson splatter film, poking needles into a zombie's
fucking eye. Anyway, the point is that these depictions of reality help
to get across what's going on much more effectively than simply sticking
to the facts might. This is what Herzog calls 'the ecstatic truth' in
which something more artistic or poetic can much more accurately get to
the reality of a situation.
There are other examples too I suppose, such as in his documentary Little Dieter Needs To Fly in
which we see a man who escaped a prisoner of war camp repetitively
locking his doors and windows whilst at home and decades later. This act
was apparently all staged by Herzog but lets face it, it gets to the
truth of the situation much more effectively than simply having the guy
monotonously say “Being locked up and tortured has really fucked my
noggin' up”. So I guess the question that I'm building towards is; 'is it
right for a documentary to make shit up like this?' To which my instant
answer would be 'err- yeah, I don't see why not'. I mean, I can understand
that it might be a problem if you're making something about an issue and
you start plucking bullshit statistics out of your arse, however with
Herzog's films, he only ever intends to tell a story. In which case I
don't see why he should be under any more pressure to remain any more
factual than a biopic is. Tim Burton's Ed Wood is
honest about being a staged reconstruction of a mans life but it does
still claim to be telling a true story. However, do you remember that
scene where we see Ed Wood meet Orson Welles? Well that was total bollocks.
Like Plan 9 From Out Of Space, it
was complete and utter shit. It just never happened. If documentaries
have to stick to the truth, then isn't it only fair that films claiming
to be based on fact should too? Or for the sake of entertainment,
wouldn't it simply be more fitting to take the advice from Mark
“Chopper” Read in his own semi-true biopic, “Never let the truth get in
the way of a good yarn”.
Perhaps
the only argument against that would be that biopics claim to be
'based on a true story', whereas it's assumed that documentaries exist
for no other primary reason than to inform. But I think this is bullshit
too... Lets not forget that the first proper documentary in which all
the tropes and cliches of the genre were seen was Nanook Of The North, and most of that film was about as fake as Mickey Rourke's porkchop
face. I can understand that it might be an issue if the documentary is
claiming to depict the truth and isn't, however Herzog is at least honest
about what he's staged. Plus the reason Nanook Of The North had
elements tampered with was because the filmmakers preferred their
fictionalised version to the reality. Herzog on the other hand simply exaggerated
reality to better convey the facts of what was happening in an
entertaining way. Plus I think that at the very end of the day, unless
your documentary is on a particularly narrow subject such as 'The Fun Of
Watching Paint Dry' or 'Why The Transformers Films Are So Good', then a
reasonable running time just isn't going to be enough to cover
everything completely. If I'm told a fact that I find interesting then I
tend not to take it at face value and instead go off and find someway
of confirming it with a little extra research. If you don't do that then
I suspect you're probably a cheese-brained fucknugget anyway. Grizzly Man is
about a man suffering from mental illness and who tried to live a
staged version of his own life with some hungry bears... I don't think
we're going to get completely to the bottom of this in a mere two hours
are we?
However that's not to say that Grizzly Man isn't
one of the most eye opening two hours of cinema out there because it
really fucking is. Beyond seeing a squeaky voiced nutter having a
meltdown, we also get amazing footage of playful foxes, animals trying to
survive, and a bear getting so into a fight that it begins to violently
shit itself. What more could you want from a movie? For me, this has to
be one of the greatest documentaries I've ever seen and one of my
favourite films of all time. If you enjoyed it, I'd also recommend the
equally phenomenal The Act Of Killing.
Both films might not simply drop their camera and press record, but in
their own way have more to say about life than an old man, pissed at a
bus stop. They also have more insight than he probably does. Plus, even a
documentary that sticks to the facts will present its findings with the
filmmaker's bias. Herzog shows the chaos and pointlessness of our world
with this film, but throw in some catchy music and I reckon it could
easily be re-edited as an actual kids movie. Kind of like Winnie The Pooh meets Cannibal Holocaust but with the ending softened for the kids. Throw in a clunky message about respecting nature like Avatar did and I reckon you've got a hit on your hands. Thanks for reading and see you next time, motherfuckers!
You can visit the blog picture artist at _Moriendus_
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