Fear & loathing in Alaska

Tim Treadwell found himself unable to fit peaceably into human society, so for thirteen years he spent his summers living among grizzly bears in Alaska until one of them finally killed him. In many ways he wasn't a very attractive person; he was naive, sentimental, self-aggrandizing and occasionally weirdly petulant. But he was dedicated and his story has pathos. If you haven't seen Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog's documentary about Treadwell, you really should. It's good to see that personal, idiosyncratic and affecting documentaries are still being made.

What's especially interesting is the conflict between two worldviews. Treadwell saw the bears, and nature generally, in an almost mystic sense. He felt them to be an essentially benign community at harmony with themselves and their environment. Herzog explicitly rejects this. He says in narration:

And what haunts me, is that in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature. To me, there is no such thing as a secret world of the bears. And this blank stare speaks only of a half-bored interest in food. But for Timothy Treadwell, this bear was a friend, a savior.

This is the crux of the movie, because it doesn't matter whether Herzog or anyone else sees in the grizzles what Treadwell did. What mattered is that Treadwell did see something and that he was able to find meaning in it. Sure he was a loon, but he was also able to transcend his looniness and achieve moments of beauty and peace.

Incidentally, Treadwell has his scenes stolen repeatedly by the foxes that lived near his camp and come off as playful, intelligent and friendly. It's very easy to see how the fox became such a central mythological figure.