Why 'Grizzly Man' Is One Of The Best Documentaries Of The 21st Century

Werner Herzog's 2005 masterpiece encapsulates so much of what nonfiction cinema has become during its "Golden Age."

If we ignore Borat (which I’m willing to do for the purists out there), only three documentaries made the New York Times’ list of the 100 best films of the 21st century: The Act of Killing, The Gleaners and I, and Grizzly Man. All three land in the final fifth of the ranking (respectively, in 82nd, 88th, and 98th place), and even more insulting, all are at least 25 titles behind a mockumentary (Christopher Guest’s Best in Show). Considering how much more popular and esteemed documentaries became after the turn of this century, you’d think they’d be better represented in a look back at the last 25 years of cinematic achievement. Still, while I’m not as keen on two of the nonfiction titles on the list as most of my colleagues, the results of the New York Times’ poll at least got it right, in my opinion, with the inclusion of Grizzly Man.

Werner Herzog’s 2005 feature seems to include but also scrutinize everything that made documentaries so successful at the time (and maybe predated some trends as well). Grizzly Man combines a nature film with a study of an eccentric yet charismatic character, while occasionally feeling like a true-crime investigation in its tone and an examination of independent filmmaking technique in its structure. It capitalizes on trauma, anticipates certain elements of influencer culture, and entangles itself with ethical dilemmas regarding the sensationalism of it all. Of course, tying the documentary together is Herzog’s voice, which, before Grizzly Man, was known exclusively to hardcore cinephiles. The film helped make Herzog and his profoundly captivating and distinctly accented narration famous to everyone.

Grizzly Man presents the story of Timothy Treadwell, a self-appointed protector of brown bears in Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve. He recorded nearly 100 hours of footage of himself observing and interacting with bears and foxes and talking to the camera about his important work. In October 2003, Treadwell and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, were killed by a bear at their camp. Herzog showcases Treadwell’s footage and portrays his subject with some disapproval, but never mockingly. It’s a shame that, after its theatrical release, a clip of Treadwell on the Late Show with David Letterman was deleted from the documentary, since its treatment of the amateur conservationist for laughs is such a great contrast to how the film handles him and the story. Herzog is fascinated but too disturbed to be insensitive.

As successful as Grizzly Man was at the time, the documentary was ironically overshadowed at the box office and during awards season by March of the Penguins. Not only a nature film exploiting animals anthropomorphically in the manner that Grizzly Man would appear to shun, but it also inspired Disney to dive back into the genre with its Disneynature brand. Less than a decade later, that studio even made its own documentary from footage shot of brown bears at Katmai, ignoring or ignorant of the criticisms of Treadwell projecting human values onto wild animals. This year, I recalled Grizzly Man’s lessons again while watching the Netflix documentary Shark Whisperer, about Ocean Ramsey, a woman who could be thought of as the Timothy Treadwell of the sea. There’s a line between the vilification of sharks and grizzlies and the reckless idea that they’re our friends, and Herzog should’ve made it clear enough.

Perhaps if Grizzly Man came across as more judgmental of Treadwell, but the film is more open to understanding his passion as well as his folly. In his voiceover, Herzog says that he’s “seen this madness before on a film set.” He may have been alluding to his longtime actor Klaus Kinski, but it also calls to mind Herzog’s passion in making Fitzcarraldo, as documented in Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams. Or, similarly, Francis Ford Coppola in Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (which Blank also worked on). Speaking of Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness, we don’t see much of Treadwell in the human world, so he’s almost like a minor Kurtz figure among the bears of the Alaskan wilderness instead of the indigenous people of the Congo. Herzog is Marlow, transfixed by a man whom others might view too simply as “crazy.”