Grizzly Man (2005)

USA, 103 minutes, documentary
Director / writer: Werner Herzog
Photography: Timothy Treadwell, Peter Zeitlinger
Music: Richard Thompson
Editor: Joe Bini
With: Timothy Treadwell, Werner Herzog, Amie Huguenard, Jewel Palovak, Franc G. Fallico, Sven Haakanson Jr.

This documentary by director and writer Werner Herzog focuses on Timothy Treadwell, now famously dead, who by the evidence here deserves all our skepticism for him as an environmentalist. Treadwell, born in 1957, saw himself as "protector of the bears" but we see him as unstable, weird, and a little creepy, recording himself on videotape with full narration and even multiple takes. These many disparate scenes were shot on the annual summer sojourns he made to the Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. There we see him as self-styled prancing magic elf of the forest, naming the bears (and the foxes too), playing with them, filming them, and all too often getting dangerously close to them. In the end one bear finally ate him and his girlfriend at the end of a lean summer. The sad reality shown here is that Treadwell did not appear to be right in the head somehow. He probably wasn't helping the bears either. But was he harming them?

That's one of the questions Herzog wrestles with as he attempts to pin down Treadwell's story, which is full of mystery and sadness. In dutiful documentary fashion Herzog produces a battery of science and wilderness experts who are embarrassed for and/or revolted by Treadwell. They argue him as a kind of anthropologist gone native, believing he wanted to be a bear and thought he was in some mystical fashion. In his final years the National Park Service attempted to hem in Treadwell and his activities with rules and policies. But he did survive some 13 summers living with his forest friends. The bears seem to know him and are accustomed to him. They respond to him and seem to temper their aggression. But was he harming them? Why does Herzog care and why should we?

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)

Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes, West Germany, 93 minutes
Director/writer: Werner Herzog
Photography: Thomas Mauch
Music: Popol Vuh
Editor: Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus
Cast: Klaus Kinski, Helena Rojo, Del Negro, Ruy Guerra, Peter Berling, Cecilia Rivera, Dan Ades, Edward Roland

Pretty much everything we have come to know and love about Werner Herzog's idiosyncratic approach to filmmaking is already present in his early masterpiece, Aguirre, the Wrath of God: a location fraught with peril, hardships for everyone involved, Klaus Kinski the impossible, otherworldly music from Popol Vuh, a dim and bleak view of human history, and a genius for working with what is available, including indigenous extras, a barrel of squirrel monkeys, and an idea for building a ship onto the top of a tree. The whole thing was shot using just one camera (which Herzog had stolen), and the majority of it is made up of one-take shots, which is understandable given the exigencies, but all the more remarkable for how sure and brilliantly visionary it is. Cinematographer Thomas Mauch deserves high praise, with Herzog (and Kinski), for making Aguirre unlike anything seen before or since.

By focusing on the 16th-century European mania for gold in the New World—notably the search for a legendary "El Dorado," which New World natives likely invented simply to placate the European explorers descending on them—Herzog found nearly an ideal vehicle for his ongoing meditations on human foolishness writ large. He never questioned how to go about it. Asked on the DVD commentary if he considered using studio soundstages, Herzog responds emphatically, "The story takes place in the Peruvian jungle. You have to go there. There's no alternative."

Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972)

#35: Aguirre: The Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972)

Werner Herzog may be most famous for his all-out gonzo approach to filmmaking. He once hauled a steamship over a steep hill in Peru in order to make a historical movie (Fitzcarraldo) about hauling a steamship over a steep hill in Peru. (Les Blank's Burden of Dreams, a documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo, is nearly as entertaining.) That kind of thing is at play in Aguirre, but Herzog demonstrates a lot of skill and economy in putting together a story that feels very big in little more than 90 minutes.

Built out of long shots of the cast in full Spanish 16th-century conquistadore regalia trudging though a jungle (Peru again), a dispassionate fixation on the bug-eyed rolling-gaited figure of Klaus Kinski shot through a fish-eye lens, and a haunting score from Popol Vuh, it's almost purely visual. The theme? Drudgery, privations, and insanity of colonialism spurred equally by spreading the news of Jesus to heathens and a lust for gold. With the explorers driven by legends of El Dorado, and the experience of Hernando Cortez a scant 40 years earlier, the madness is palpable.