Grizzly Man Best Documentary of the Year!

You can always count on German director Werner Herzog for a completely unique approach, regardless of the subject matter. His latest documentary, Grizzly Man, is ostensibly a film about a wildlife activist who literally lived among grizzly bears in Alaska every summer for 13 years before being killed by one in 2003. But in Herzog's hands, the film's subject, Timothy Treadwell, is more than the eccentric preservationist he presented in person.

Instead, we have a portrait of Treadwell the filmmaker, based on over 100 hours of video footage he left behind - footage that even includes audio of his and his girlfriend's violent deaths at the claws of a grizzly bear. (Thankfully, Herzog also resists the temptation to share that particularly gruesome sound with us.)

Of course, the irony of his words, his actions, his life can be seen upon retrospective viewing of Treadwell's footage. After all, his basic position was always about how man and bear can get along together, despite their differing natures. Herzog does not hide this element, but he doesn't underline it for us, either.

He moves well beyond that irony to give us direct insights, one filmmaker talking about another's frame of mind, as we look at those images. What was going through his mind as he filmed the very bear that may have eventually killed him?

We are reminded that while Treadwell's relationship to the grizzlies was always difficult, so is that between any documentarian and his/her subject, Herzog and Treadwell, included. Treadwell not only films the bears, he also films himself commenting on their situation.

These commentary segments become increasingly bizarre. What starts out as footage of an activist on a mission to save wild bears from poachers and other enemies, quickly turns into a psychological study of a paranoid young man, whose bond with the grizzlies raises in direct proportion to his alienation from human beings. And beyond that, we also see the struggle Herzog goes through in examining the life of someone whose views he considers mad. In addition to Treadwell's own video footage, director of photography Peter Zeitlinger gives us some gorgeous imagery.

The bears themselves are fascinating to observe, and one can almost understand Treadwell's obsession with them. This is clearly not a film about bears, though. It is about a very troubled man whose understanding of nature held many convenient gaps, particularly involving the nature's cruelty and indifference, and the truly basic instincts of wildlife to "kill or be killed."

As the film progresses, the only truly tragic figure becomes Treadwell's female companion, Amie Huguenard, who didn't want to be there, wanted to go home, planned to leave Treadwell, and always feared bears.

Treadwell's death becomes less a tragic accident and more a slow, calculated suicidal mission over a decade in the execution. Whether consciously or not, it seems Treadwell almost aspired to be mauled by a bear. In losing his connection with human society, in his inability to deal with his human problems, Treadwell sought out bears and eventually, wanted to be a bear.

As Herzog explained in an NPR interview recently, to be killed by a bear, was in Treadwell's mind, an honor, because it meant that the bear saw him as another bear, a threatening one to be confronted.

The horror of these events is in what it says about the line we all walk between human civilization and wildlife. It's a line we can come close to, but never can cross, a line more complex than most ecological debates in the media seem to allow. "Grizzly Man" is absolutely the best documentary of the year, and perhaps of the century so far.