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Movie Review by The Undertaker
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04.08.07
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One of the oddest documentaries I've seen, Grizzly Man proves both sad and hard to watch, yet enjoyable on many levels. Not a horror film or even about horror films, this thing none the less was scary and nasty in its own way. The films subject and a female friend were both eaten alive by grizzly bears in Alaska one summer after his 13 year effort to "save" and help these bears. True life, reality. They found four garbage bags of what remained of the couple when a pilot who came to check in on them saw a bear still working on a torso. Audio from the bear attack of the man being eaten and the girl trying to fight the bear off was left behind, though tastefully Werner Herzog doesn't let this be heard by the viewer. It made him cry, so better off left unaired. All this isn't the sad or scary thing to me. Obviously, living alone, unarmed among bears for 13 summers is a 50/50 chance at death at best. Seeing Timothy Treadwell's slow mental breakdown from year to year has he lived out there was the sadness to me. You could see the man had problems, it's even shown that he had been diagnosed and medicated for various things. I didn't see where he was actually a scientist or and official wildlife researcher either. He was just a man lost in the modern world that wanted to help out these animals. In many ways, nature helped him and hurt him at the same time. He seemed very happy in most of his recovered footage, even if seeming to slowly decline mentally. Just being out there in the wild gave him a purpose, however misguided it may have seemed, to live and keep going. In the end though, I truly wondered if his death wasn't suicide. Why was a camcorder left on in the tent during the fatal bear attack with the lense cap on to prevent the event from being seen and only heard. Weird if you ask me. This documentary deserves a look and I think it will cause most people's emotions to run full circle. Treadwell manage to capture some very rare footage of wild bears and other animals up way too close and personal and his heart was in the right place. Ultimately, nature took it's course though and perhaps he went the way he wanted to go, no one knows but him.
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Rating: 10.0 out of 10.0 - 2 votes cast total
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