Frolic Of The Bears

Grizzly Man is a documentary compiled and narrated by the famed German filmmaker Werner Herzog about Timothy Treadwell, a young man who camped and lived in the Alaskan wilderness with wild grizzly bears for 13 years until Treadwell and his girlfriend, neither of which ever once carried weapons of any kind, were both killed and devoured by one of the very grizzlies that they were attempting to befriend.

Treadwell, with his shaggy blonde surfer-boy looks and hippie "dude" vernacular, had no previous education in ecology or zoology when he decided to make it his life's ambition to study and document the lives the wild bears, attempting to draw attention to their plight by "protecting" them with his presence (despite the fact that these bears lived on the Katmai National Park animal reserve where they were already protected by the government). A troubled fellow with a past history of drugs and alcohol, Treadwell seems to finally find a sense of comfort and inner peace with the bears, announcing that he will "live and die" with them if need be. But solace soon gives way to madness, and like many of Herzog's civilized male heroes battling the foreign jungle element from past films (Fitzcarraldo, Aguirre: The Wrath of God) Treadwell's obsession begins to slowly twist his mind before the inevitable cruelty of nature closes in around him and finally, almost shockingly, mercifully consumes him.

Indeed, as much as he embraces the beauty of nature, it's that inevitable cruel side that the overly-sensitive Treadwell had difficulty accepting. He weeps over the body of a slain fox cub, venting like an angry child who is unable to understand why things have to die. During a particularly bad drought when food became scarce for the bears, Treadwell videotapes himself in his tent, screaming desperately for anyone to hear to bring the rains back to the land because "Melissa is eating her babies!". One would think that Treadwell was pleading for the life of a family member or a good friend, but his energy, his sorrow is for a bear -- a bear he named Melissa because he considered her his dear friend. And it is this illusion of friendship that eventually leads to his as well as his girlfriend's tragic demise. Despite being the self-proclaimed expert on bears, living dangerously close to them for 13 years and coming to understanding their nature, Treadwell never understands fully that bears, like all wild animals, can never be our friends in the manner that us humans reach out and long for in each other. Asking a giant predator like a grizzly bear to accept a human as if it were human itself is an impossibility. And the bear that killed, famished from the past drought and a lack of fish in the river, only did to Treadwell what all bears do in nature.

The movie reminded me of how much we as humans are so ruled by our singular human emotions that we often can't help but imprint them on other living things that aren't quite capable of reciprocating. Each one of us have attempted in some extent to anthropomorphize our own pets because our love for them is so strong that we all can't help but hope that they love us back equally and look for these signs in what are otherwise instinct-driven behaviors. We all think our cats love us when they brush up against our legs and purr, although really the cat is just brushing the glands beneath its facial whiskers over surfaces to mark its territory like most cats do in the wild. We think our dogs love us when they wag their tails and lick our faces when really, like their lupine ancestors who socialize in packs, they are only naturally behaving in the same manner as with the alpha males of their pack as a gesture of obeisance to their leader. As much as we love Fluffy and Rex with all our overflowing human hearts, they just don't mirror that love back to us in the way that truly constitutes a friendship. A partnership based on mutually shared emotional reciprocation.

Treadwell failed to understand that no matter how deeply he loved the bears, the bears were never going to love him back. His love made him reckless and drop his guard around the giant beasts, who are admittedly beautiful creatures with an insatiable curiosity about us. I found the most telling quote of the film coming from Herzog who, when studying the bubbly effusive Treadwell's lovingly directed close-up of a bear's face, looks into its eyes and sees nothing but "the overwhelming indifference of nature." That line alone couldn't sum up the situation stacked against Treadwell any more succinctly. Nature is indifferent to Treadwell's love. Treadwell died in the simple order of nature, to feed another animal even higher up the food chain than he was. But what I found truly touching of all was that it's not impossible to believe that Treadwell died still loving his bears, still believing them to be his friends. Although nature consumes matter, human love still remains untouchable and indomitable.