Grizzly Man

Werner Herzog’s movie about Timothy Treadwell is a perfect complement to Herzog’s great films of the ’70s. Like Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre: The Wrath of God, this movie is about a man who finds meaning by leaving the civilized world behind and entering the wilderness. Unlike those films, it’s true, and its hero gets eaten by a bear. Treadwell lived with the Alaskan grizzlies for 13 summers, filming them, creating a mythology about himself and entering into some very intense relations with foxes, bears and his own enormous ego. Herzog takes Treadwell’s video tapes, adds interviews with his friends and family, and creates a perfect portrait of a man who was unable to live in the artificial world and so moved into a natural, albeit fictional one. In the end, Herzog creates what is easily the best movie ever made about a man who was eaten by a bear.