Belltown Messenger

One of the highlights for me at this year's Seattle International Film Festival was the documentary Grizzly Man. The film tells the story of Timothy Treadwell, who traveled to Alaska every summer to "look over" the grizzly bears. During his 13th summer, he and his girlfriend were killed - or eaten, actually - by a bear.
There are two elements about this film that make it a more interesting doc. One, during his last five trips, Treadwell began filming his escapades, meaning there's a wealth of footage to draw from in telling his story. Two, the film's director is Werner Herzog, not only a first-rate director, but also a man whose work has frequently dealt with the nature of obsession.

For that's what this film is really about; not the grizzlies, not Treadwell's ostensible work with them, but obsession. As we see more and more of Treadwell's footage, most of which has him delivering monologues directly to the camera, his mission ultimately seems to be less about the bears and more about giving his life a sense of purpose. Treadwell had no background in animal studies; he was a failed actor who created a new persona (and name) for himself as a "Grizzly Man," monitoring his beloved bears for some greater good. What that is isn't exactly clear; aside from his footage, did he document his studies of the bears? Create any sort of records for further studies? Work with conservation groups? We're never told.
Not that Treadwell's self-aggrandizement makes him any less interesting a personality; it doesn't. But it's his delusion about dealing with wild animals that's most unnerving. Treadwell's interaction with the bears seem to indicate that he regards them as nothing more than large pets. He not only names them, he imbues them with personalities, making it even harder for him to accept nature's harsh realities, as when discovering that male grizzlies sometimes eat their own young. And his near-worship of the animal's excrement borders on the fetishistic.
In addition to editing the footage, Herzog interviews those who knew Treadwell. He's also more of a presence in the film himself, providing the narration, and shown interviewing his subjects, most dramatically when he listens over headphones to a tape recording of Treadwell and his girlfriend attempting to fight off the bear that killed them (the attack was too sudden for Treadwell to get the lens cap off his camera, so an audio recording is all that remains). Herzog doesn't judge Treadwell - he lets the other interviewees do that - which helps make Grizzly Man a fascinating document about a troubled, yet compelling, personality, proving yet again that truth is decidedly stranger than fiction.