So, you want to know what the last best movie I saw was? Thanks for asking.
I rented
Grizzly Man a couple of weeks ago, and I liked it so much I bought the company--er, I mean, the DVD. It's en route from Amazon, and I can't wait to watch it again.
Poor ol' deluded Timothy Treadwell. Got eaten by a bear. But while that's the grisly hook that drags you into the film, it's far from the point. Because while he was deluded in the specifics--that is, he thought bears were his friends, and that he was their protector from the human society he had largely rejected--in more general terms, how different was he from anyone? Because I think the movie is really about how people search for meaning, and a place, in a chaotic and meaningless world. When I say "meaningless", I mean that it's meaningless in a vacuum, on its own. Whatever meaning we perceive is given to it by us.
Treadwell speaks in the film of his troubled life, his alcoholism and his failures with relationships. He says the animals saved him by being his friend. And the reason he lives with the bears, he says, is to be their friend, by protecting them from poachers and other humans. And he speaks of the good he is doing, and how important this work is. But, of course, most of this is in his own mind.
Most of the comments about the film that I've seen, in reader reviews on Amazon and so on, seem to say that Treadwell is a fool and got what he deserved for being so dumb. Well, I wouldn't totally disagree. I mean, I don't think anyone "deserves" to be killed so horribly--but he was, in a sense, asking for it. But isn't he still just an extreme example of a universal phenomenon? All of us want to feel we live meaningful lives, all of us want to feel we have a place in the world. And how many of us, if we try to step back and be objective, can say that we do meaningful work?
Actually, I think some of the hostility I've seen toward him in these comments is
because people recognize on some level that there's something universal about aspects of his story, as presented in the film (which I mention because we only see about an hour of the 90 or so hours of film he shot--clearly there's editing at work, and a purpose to that editing--more on that in a moment). It's like laughing at those Darwin Awards, laughing at people who die stupidly. Why is it funny? I think it has something to do with fear of mortality, and the hope that maybe if we don't do such stupid things, we won't die, or at least we'll die with dignity. Which is another form of trying to find order in a random world.
Gee, I didn't really intend to get this deep in my first hour of blogging.
Anyway,
Grizzly Man has really turned me on to its director, Werner Herzog. I had (fairly recently) seen his
Aguirre: The Wrath of God and
Fitzcarraldo, both great films with some unforgettable images, but it wasn't until I saw
Grizzly Man that I really connected with his work. But then, it was so much so, that I actually just got a box set of his films with the actor Klaus Kinski, which includes
Aguirre and
Fitzcarraldo. I watched one of the films today, a documentary called
My Best Fiend, about Herzog's relationship with Kinski. Interesting enough on its own terms, but mainly it has really gotten me lubed up for the rest of the box.
I also watched
Burden of Dreams, which is a documentary by Les Blank about the filming of
Fitzcarraldo. This is a must-see as well, if you liked
Fitzcarraldo. It shows the lengths Herzog went to to make the film, which were, let us say, not insignificant. A smaller example of what makes Herzog so great is in the short film (included on the
Burden of Dreams Criterion DVD)
Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. He had challenged Errol Morris to make his own great first film,
Gates of Heaven, by offering to eat his own shoe if Morris could get it done. And he made good on the promise at the
Gates premiere at Berkeley, after cooking a pair with onions, garlic and hot sauce. As he scissors apart the tough leather into bite-sized chunks, he puts the same challenge to the audience: follow your dreams, don't be scared, you can do anything you put your mind to. Just do it. He makes a point of saying, too, that the shoes he cooked are the same ones he had been wearing when he made the bet. He could have bought a newer, softer pair to eat, he says, but that just wouldn't be right: "I don't like cowards", he says.
All of which is to say that Herzog is my new hero. And rent
Grizzly Man, because it's a great movie and even though most of the footage wasn't shot by Herzog, it has his stamp all over it, in his narration and his editing of Treadwell's footage. And I can't believe it didn't get nominated for Best Documentary at this year's Oscars.
