The great Werner Herzog documentary Grizzly Man on many levels illustrates the drives that FC was compelled to talk about and theorize on. The movie's subject, Tim Treadwell, found a way to battle and defeat his own demons and habits by finding communion with grizzly bears. He adopted a mission to protect them. It was a mission he stayed true to, and while his vision of what he needed to accomplish and the forces he had to battle along the way might have been distorted he also found in that mission something that satisfied his selfish needs.
The movie is comprised largely of Tim's own footage, which was shot over several years in wild Alaska. Parts are educational, as he intended, but because he was often there alone, they also are confessional and filled with moments of dialogue, drama, and showmanship that emerge out of loneliness, boredom, and great reflection. In every confession there are moments of self deception that are as telling as those feelings revealed honestly. In his camera, Tim gave us those, and the reward is remarkable.
Tim was a troubled man, and his solution for dealing with his problems were radical, some would say insane. There are also grounds to suggest that his tactics were harmful to the bears he came to know. He is, therefore, a person man people will find hard to empathize with; indeed, we're as likely to find as many people who came to dislike him as a result of this portrait as those who even came to sympathize with him. But like him or not, he accomplished several brilliant things in his life and his footage.
To start, his films and photos are incredibly beautiful.
Second, he captured on film life's swirl of psychological forces. Tim had an addictive personality, and somehow -- with great strength -- he directed those forces within him to a dedication to living in the jungle among bears. This was a man who was born on Long Island. How could he get from there to Alaska? The strife of that life would have been so easy to abandon. In his films he captured some hint of what took him (and kept him in) that space in the world and in his own soul.
Staying in Alaska was a battle to be sure. He celebrated the danger of it, and it sounds that in some ways he was addicted to the danger. But as he was alone for months on end we know there were moments when this must have been unbearably difficult. In snippets of those moments, we are rewarded with his views presented from one other special part of his soul.
Herzog said that his one hope for the film is that illuminates some part of our human condition. That, of course, is the purpose of all art; and in this respect the film succeeds. What Tim managed in using his camera as he did was a document of living with an honesty that was, and at times was not, intended. We're not invited into Tim's life to judge it but to be touched by it. Many forums (paintings, photographs, text) will allow for the same depth of feeling, but what is special about film is the immediacy of each event; the spontaneity of each take (and the intended and unintended impressions captured in each); and the context that the visuals give to Tim's thoughts and disposition at that time.
Falling in line with FC's view, Tim demonstrates an unyielding need to communicate with himself and someone/something much larger. It is not surprising that Tim's friends later said that he would have been very pleased with the film, in part because it finally makes him the rockstar he always wanted to be. This goes to FC's idea that a part of our nature is to push for understanding and to be understood, in part at least for selfish reasons.
Inherent in FC's view of the world is a battle of our nature with itself. Our drive, FC said, is to communicate. It is a compulsion of our nature to in a way overcome nature at large, not accidentally through the use of technology. In this respect, the film is very much a testament to our uneasy relationship with nature. We are inextricably a part of it, yet divided from much of it by our technological contrivances -- contrivances that Tim very much came to hate. Our use of technology is a significant component of what separates us from the rest of nature. Where Tim saw beauty in the order of the natural world, society at large tries to impose order and safety on the chaos of nature through the use of technology.
Finally, while Tim sought unity with the natural world, he was forever separated from full communion with bears because he sought it and because of the way he sought it -- that is, through film. It is amazing that only through technology was Tim able to share the magic that he had sought and mostly found in the Alaskan woods.
