Funny Bear

I was thoroughly impressed with Werner Herzog’s ability to make Grizzly Man funny. Subtle (and at times not so subtle) ironies are sprinkled throughout the movie: for instance, the fact that the bear that could have killed Treatwell was called ‘Rowdy’, or the rather flamboyant references to ‘Mr Chocolate’ and the bears “getting him” – bears here referring to LGBT slang in addition to the actual animals.

While humor obviously plays a very obvious role when we encounter Treadwell’s juxtaposition in his monologues (coming across at best bi-polar, and at worst crazy) I was frustrated by how rehearsed the other characters’ pieces were. The pilot’s story of his discovery of the bears seems overly dramatic: “Each time I flew over the bears started eating faster and faster” he tells, referring to the bears eating Treadwell and his girlfriend’s body. I found that while these pieces were effective for their shock value and while I’m sure Treadwell would have been happy at how polished the final product appeared, I feel that a certain amount of authenticity was lost in the process.