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'Grizzly Man': Requiem for a damaged dreamer

Timothy Treadwell loved grizzly bears so much, he could just eat 'em up.

Unfortunately, as we see in Werner Herzog's brilliant documentary "Grizzly Man," it happened the other way around.

Lions Gate Films 'Grizzly Man' B+ The verdict: The bear facts of a tragedy, dazzlingly rendered by one-of-a-kind German director Werner Herzog. Director: Werner Herzog Starring: Timothy Treadwell, Amie Huguenard, Werner Herzog, Warren Queeney, William Fulton Run time: 100 minutes Release date: August 12, 2005 Rating: R for language. On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime [an error occurred while processing this directive]

Treadwell was a hippie-dippy uncredentialed naturalist whose unfettered enthusiasm for all things ursine suggested a mix of the Crocodile Hunter and Carrot Top. Tragically, he eventually became a victim of his own passion.

He spent 13 summers in Alaska, living near his beloved bears and videotaping hundreds of hours of footage of himself, the bears, and often, himself and the bears, whose, um, personal space he invaded with reckless aplomb.

All went well until October 2003, when he and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, were killed and devoured by a grizzly who was probably unfamiliar with the blond interloper and too hungry to ask for an I.D.

Herzog combed through Treadwell's tapes, conducted interviews with locals who knew him, with wildlife experts, even with the pilot who discovered the remains and the coroner who did the autopsy. As he did so, he discovered another of his famously driven obsessives. Like Aguirre, who searched for El Dorado, and Fitzcarraldo, who pulled a steamship over a mountain, Treadwell never had much time for reality checks.

Neither the native Inuits, who'd lived with the grizzlies for centuries, nor environmental professionals, who specialized in the care and management of bears, approved of Treadwell's methods. He gave the animals names like Mr. Chocolate and Sgt. Brown, and would walk up within paw-swiping distance. Such disregard for the boundaries between humans and nature was dangerous, both for the grizzlies, who b ecame comfortable around people, and nature lovers who ... well, we know what happened to poor Treadwell.

Herzog doesn't dismiss his subject. He openly admires Treadwell's filmmaking and acknowledges his good intentions. In many ways, he lets Treadwell tell his own story through his videos. How he narcissistically primped before a shot. How he tried to pretend he was all alone in the wilderness when it was often evident someone else was around. In one uncensored moment, forgetting the camera is on, he turns from Mr. Rogers to Norman Bates, spewing vulgarity-laced invective against the Park Service rangers who often pointed out that Mr. Chocolate didn't really need protection, since he was already living in a protected area.

We learn Treadwell was something of a lost soul long before he fixated on his animal pals. Born to a middle-class New York family, he told people he was Australian, ran into trouble with booze and drugs at school, and apparently began his Alaska trips after supposedly losing out to Woody Harrelson for the bartender role in "Cheers."

Treadwell clearly relished his small slice of the limelight, appearing with David Letterman, co-authoring a book and traveling to schools to give free lectures. The thought occurs, he may have preferred death by bear to restless semi-anonymity.

Whatever you finally conclude about Treadwell, Herzog has made a one-of-a-kind movie. "Grizzly Man" is a requiem for a damaged dreamer, a kind of cockeyed tribute to a man who loved not wisely, but too well.