GRIZZLY MAN (2005)

GRIZZLY MAN is an interesting documentary (directed by Werner Herzog) about a man named Timothy Treadwell.  The thing that makes the film so interesting is that Timothy (along with girlfriend Amie Huguenard) died in a bear attack in 2003 and the film is mainly made up of footage that Timothy himself filmed while living in extremely close proximity with bears for months on end (mostly alone) for 13 years!  That's right, each summer for over a decade Timothy would go to the Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska and camp out in the wild with nothing but his supplies and (in the last 5 years) some video equipment.  Anyway, according to Werner, Timothy compiled over 100 hours of film and GRIZZLY MAN is the end result of stuff taken from Timothy's movies and interviews that Werner conducted with people involved with Timothy's life and death.

I liked GRIZZLY MAN and found the whole thing very haunting.  Timothy's films (along with the Don Edwards song "Coyotes") are far and away the highlight of the movie and while they are simultaneously startling and shocking in how just how close the misguided Timothy lived with these animals, they are also endlessly fascinating in what they capture.

As far as a documentary goes, GRIZZLY MAN succeeds in entertaining the audience, but I wasn't totally satisfied with the movie.  Timothy's footage and the music were fantastic, but the interviews were not very good.  I liked the one with the pilot who found Timothy's body, but the other ones were pretty weak and I didn't care for the almost staged looking scenes about Tim's wristwatch and the one with Werner listening to the audio of Timothy and Amie's death.  And don't even get me started with the coroner scenes!  What was with that guy?!

Overall, Timothy comes off looking like an immature man-child who probably did more damage to the animals than he did good by making them become more accustomed to humans, but it's still sad that he and Amie died so young and in such a horrible way.

I'm curious if any of the animals that Timothy became "friendly" with ever missed him or thought of him after he was gone? I bet that one fox, Timmy, did. Timothy even said, while petting Timmy on the head, that he and Timmy had been friends for over a decade. Poor Timmy. He never got another head scratching ever again.

SIGNS OF LIFE (1968)

"Now that I can talk, what shall I say?"

During WWII a wounded German paratrooper, Stroszek, after being released from the hospital, is reassigned to light-duty on the small Greek island of Kos.  There's only 60 soldiers on the island and he along with two other soldiers and his wife are stationed to guard a small fort.  With nothing to do, the four quietly idle away their days.  For a normal person this would be a cake job, but the empty time is too much for Stroszek and he slowly starts to go insane.

This is very simple story and in a lot of directors hands it would end up a boring disaster, but somehow the young Werner Herzog turns this (his first feature length film) into an absolutely beautiful movie.  So much so that when I finished it, I watched it all over again!  It's hard to put my finger on it, but the entire film is simply hypnotic.  The slow pace, the almost documentary-like filming style, the performances that Werner pulled out of the cast of mostly unknown or non-actors, the beautiful b&w photography, the odd sounds and maybe most importantly the gorgeous music by Stavros Xarhakos.  His music was the thing that really propelled the film from being just "above average" to "great".

SIGNS OF LIFE is not for all audiences, but if you are willing to give it a chance I think that you will walk away a better person.

Werner Herzog in the background.