Feb 03 2006 06:09 AM
If anyone's interested, this is on TV tonight.
| New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com A 'Grizzly' film that you can't forget DAVID BIANCULLI Friday, February 3rd, 2006   GRIZZLY MAN. Tonight at 8, Discovery Channel. For 13 consecutive summers, Long Island native Timothy Treadwell went to Alaska to live among grizzly bears - filming them the last five of those years and capturing more than 100 hours of footage. But Treadwell's 2003 voyage to the Arctic wilderness was a one-way trip: He and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, who had accompanied him on his last two trips, were killed by bears. Werner Herzog, the film director whose best films, like "Fitzcarraldo," are about solitary men with singular obsessions, finds in Treadwell's story a real-life subject that's perfect for him. "Grizzly Man," premiering tonight at 8 on The Discovery Channel, is a documentary that's amazing to watch, and impossible to shake. Herzog interviews Treadwell's parents and friends, and a few others, but the weight of "Grizzly Man" comes from the film shot by Treadwell himself. Some scenes show the bears cavorting and fighting in the wild; others show Treadwell boldly, sometimes foolishly, getting within arm's reach of the bears and sharing their camera space, and still others show Treadmill addressing the camera directly, like a wild-eyed Travis Bickle from "Taxi Driver," but talking to the lens instead of a mirror. Treadwell's parents talk of his onetime dream of being an actor, and of a time when he supposedly tried for the part played by Woody Harrelson in "Cheers." Yet the only credit in Treadwell's resume is a 2001 appearance on "Late Show With David Letterman," where the host elicits laughter and applause from the studio audience by asking, "Is it going to happen that one day we read a news article about you being eaten by one of these bears?" In retrospect, that's prescient, not funny. And watching Treadwell on tape, and listening to his wide-ranging mood swings and tender appreciation for the foxes and bears in his midst, gives "Grizzly Man" a range, a weight and a reality that are singularly hypnotizing. Amazingly, the attack that killed Treadwell and Huguenard was recorded on camera, though so suddenly that the lens cap was on, and only the audio was captured. Even more amazingly, Herzog avoids the more sensational route and refuses to play that audio during the film, other than its first few quiet seconds (with Treadwell whispering, "Get away; go away"). Instead, he films himself listening to the tape on headphones - and advising its owner, who has not heard it herself, to destroy it. At 10:30, The Discovery Channel complements the film with a half-hour special, "Diary of the Grizzly Man," that addresses the film's content and authenticity. The film itself, though, is the main attraction. As a study of both man and beast, it's unforgettable. |