Cinema and Death

As I watched Timothy Treadwell in Grizzly Man I couldn't help the fact that I felt as Barthes did when he looked at the picure of the chained prisoner, awaiting his exucution. When Barthes examined this picture, he said the thing that stuck out to him and made his almost sick was the fact that he was looking at a living person with a beating heart and new at the current present date, this person was dead. Likewise with Grizzly Man, everytime I saw Tim on film I felt this wave of almost grief toward him, knowing that he is no longer with us today and what we were seeing on film was the last of his days. Almost like we knew of the big event coming, his death, and watched as he was oblivious to it all. In my opinion, I think the picture of the chained prisoner make a bigger impact at first because with a moving picture, we have some questions answered as in the Who? What? Where? When? Why? In a photograph we may answer some of these questions, but not all. However, I think the fact we got to watch Tim on film, learn of his compassion for bears, learn of his life, learn of his past struggles and triumphs made us connect to Tim better than a picture would and that is why if was more difficult to accept his death than of the prisoners. Also in the movie, we learned that Tim was not doing anything to hurt another person but by the prisoner being chained we may assume that he was harmful to society or tried to hurt someone (this is an assumption which of course is not always true.)

Another interesting thing I noticed about myself during the film was how much I wanted to hear the recording of his death. Awful as this must sound, I don't believe I was the only one. The difference between a film and picture is that a film can show us the end result and a picture usually doesn't. In the case of this film however, its almost like the plot drives toward the climax of his death and when they reach the part where the film is suppose to produce the most effect, they skip over it and climb back down. I think some film makers do this to make the audience make up there own idea of something that would scare the crap out of them. For example, lets say in a scary movie there is a noise behind a closed door, maybe its a monster sound, who knows. Anyway you slowly creep toward and slowly open it. Now as the spectator what are you expecting? A monster? A murderer? A ghost? In my opinion 9/10 times what the spectator sees is usually not the scariest thing for them to see. THats why I like how some directors keep the door closed and make the spectator come up with their own demon.