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4.29.2006
May each state's DMV be eaten by grizzlies.
To be honest, I breathed in a lot more of Annoyingdrunk Orangeshirtguy's sweat than Mr. Tweedy's, and Mr. Orangeshirtguy's sweat smelled, as I said afterwards to SEA, worse than the Tatnall locker room after a football twoadays.
Wilco, of course, rocked hard. Third time's a charm, they say (not that there was any fault with the first or second in this case, as I'm sure my fellow concertgoers in each instance would attest).
Since the previous update I've had multiple DMV failures (with nothing to show for any of them--the last time I was engaged in conversation using the words Kafkaesque and byzantine so frequently, I was discussing the legal situation at Gitmo with a professor), driven to DE and back, gotten my Property papers in order for some hardcore studying starting tomorrow, read a bit more on the history of the middle east, and watched some stuff. I'm not sure I'll ever get this car stuff worked out (but I've received three whole inquiries about the Bonneville!).
As for the OC, omg, Seth and Summer seem to be good again but everything else is falling apart around them!!! American Idol: I'm sorry, but it was Kelly's time to go.
Then the movies; SEA and I attended an IMAX showing of Deep Sea 3D to assuage our DMV frustrations, and it definitely did the trick. There's some crazy stuff down there, let me tell you. The highlight to me was the Danny Elfman score; I decided partway through that he should be required to score every documentary about deep sea life from now on; his rather unorthodox style of sweeping orchestral music complemented by choirs of "la-la"s serves as the perfect companion to alien fields of coral and anemones. Hearing Johnny Depp narrate was an extra plus.
Grizzly Man: I plead guilty to overusing the term "postmodern" in our ever more self-aware society, but man does Grizzly Man ever lend itself to postmodern analysis. The general gist is something like this: true story--man (Timothy Treadwell) goes into Alaskan wilderness to live with grizzly bears (coming back from time to time to teach kids about how they're peaceful creatures), shoots 100+ hours of footage, gets killed by grizzly bear after 13 summers of twisted symbiosis; intrigued semi-nihilistic filmmaker (Werner Herzog) gets ahold of footage and cuts it into an argument that the nature of the universe is chaos and violence. Probably what interested me the most about Grizzly Man, though, was the bizarre power struggle between the dead Treadwell, who shot and narrated the original footage, and Herzog, who provided his own shots and narration. Both had strong points they intended to make, so in the end the film amounts to a conflict between two unreliable narrators! Whoa.
Herzog shows us Treadwell's tentative grip on sanity, peppering in plenty of sympathetic footage (e.g. Treadwell and his companion foxes), but always being careful not to give the man too much credit (e.g. Treadwell telling his companion foxes, "I love you, I love you so much."). Herzog's narration ranges from cinematic commentary (still careful, however, not to give too much credit to Treadwell)--e.g. how Treadwell manages to capture some of the beauty of the wilderness inadvertently, between planned shots--to unintentional self-caricature: the nihilists in The Big Lebowski come to mind as Herzog provides in a heavily accented monotone that he believes the natural order is "chaos, violence, and murder."
In the end, I believe Grizzly Man is a brilliant film, whether intentionally so or not; it combines a fascinating central theme, fantastic nature cinematography, and the two extremes of Treadwell's and Herzog's viewpoints, both of which are basically unfounded. The film did not demonstrate to me, as Treadwell would have wanted, that grizzlies are just a simpler, happier, but equally social form of humans, and that one need only to learn their mores in order to slip unnoticed into their society. Neither did it demonstrate, however, that grizzlies are, in the end, the creatures described in this Herzog quote:
The foxes are adorable, too.
Johnny B's in the morning and then study study study.
Wilco, of course, rocked hard. Third time's a charm, they say (not that there was any fault with the first or second in this case, as I'm sure my fellow concertgoers in each instance would attest).
Since the previous update I've had multiple DMV failures (with nothing to show for any of them--the last time I was engaged in conversation using the words Kafkaesque and byzantine so frequently, I was discussing the legal situation at Gitmo with a professor), driven to DE and back, gotten my Property papers in order for some hardcore studying starting tomorrow, read a bit more on the history of the middle east, and watched some stuff. I'm not sure I'll ever get this car stuff worked out (but I've received three whole inquiries about the Bonneville!).
As for the OC, omg, Seth and Summer seem to be good again but everything else is falling apart around them!!! American Idol: I'm sorry, but it was Kelly's time to go.
Then the movies; SEA and I attended an IMAX showing of Deep Sea 3D to assuage our DMV frustrations, and it definitely did the trick. There's some crazy stuff down there, let me tell you. The highlight to me was the Danny Elfman score; I decided partway through that he should be required to score every documentary about deep sea life from now on; his rather unorthodox style of sweeping orchestral music complemented by choirs of "la-la"s serves as the perfect companion to alien fields of coral and anemones. Hearing Johnny Depp narrate was an extra plus.
Grizzly Man: I plead guilty to overusing the term "postmodern" in our ever more self-aware society, but man does Grizzly Man ever lend itself to postmodern analysis. The general gist is something like this: true story--man (Timothy Treadwell) goes into Alaskan wilderness to live with grizzly bears (coming back from time to time to teach kids about how they're peaceful creatures), shoots 100+ hours of footage, gets killed by grizzly bear after 13 summers of twisted symbiosis; intrigued semi-nihilistic filmmaker (Werner Herzog) gets ahold of footage and cuts it into an argument that the nature of the universe is chaos and violence. Probably what interested me the most about Grizzly Man, though, was the bizarre power struggle between the dead Treadwell, who shot and narrated the original footage, and Herzog, who provided his own shots and narration. Both had strong points they intended to make, so in the end the film amounts to a conflict between two unreliable narrators! Whoa.
Herzog shows us Treadwell's tentative grip on sanity, peppering in plenty of sympathetic footage (e.g. Treadwell and his companion foxes), but always being careful not to give the man too much credit (e.g. Treadwell telling his companion foxes, "I love you, I love you so much."). Herzog's narration ranges from cinematic commentary (still careful, however, not to give too much credit to Treadwell)--e.g. how Treadwell manages to capture some of the beauty of the wilderness inadvertently, between planned shots--to unintentional self-caricature: the nihilists in The Big Lebowski come to mind as Herzog provides in a heavily accented monotone that he believes the natural order is "chaos, violence, and murder."
In the end, I believe Grizzly Man is a brilliant film, whether intentionally so or not; it combines a fascinating central theme, fantastic nature cinematography, and the two extremes of Treadwell's and Herzog's viewpoints, both of which are basically unfounded. The film did not demonstrate to me, as Treadwell would have wanted, that grizzlies are just a simpler, happier, but equally social form of humans, and that one need only to learn their mores in order to slip unnoticed into their society. Neither did it demonstrate, however, that grizzlies are, in the end, the creatures described in this Herzog quote:
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.So the three things I've taken away from Grizzly Man in the brief time I've had to consider it: first, as acknowledged by the end of that quote, the film presents a perhaps slightly biased character study of a truly singular, if insane, man; second, it sets forth a cinematic struggle between two filmmakers and their extremely different points of view; and third, it's just a pretty darn interesting look at interactions between humans and grizzly bears.
The foxes are adorable, too.
Johnny B's in the morning and then study study study.
Labels: Bonneville
posted by Max Greene at 12:03 AM
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3 Comments:
I thought Grizzly Man was comedic, but also stupid. Timothy Treadwell failed to live up to his mission of protecting the bears; when he actually sees the hunters, he hides in the bushes and does nothing. He also has that bizarre, profane diatribe against the government, yet they are the ones with scientists who are actually trained to preserve wildlife. As for the filmmaking, all of the people interviewed in the film were just trying to be sensationalist; the coroner was especially laughable, as was the point where Herzog had the pseudo-girlfriend listen to the tape and the two of them then came to the "agreement" not to let anyone else hear it. There is some nice footage of the Alaskan terrain and wildlife, but in general, it seemed like it was just Herzog exploiting some idiot's death in order to make a documentary in which he could grandly opine on life.
This is why I stick to mainstream movies. For example, The Da Vinci Code is coming out soon!
Your criticisms are exactly what I loved about the film. Of course Treadwell failed in his mission--his mission never really made any sense, at least as Unreliable Narrator Herzog makes it out to us. Likewise Herzog's grand opining on life was ridiculous, but buzz around the internet a bit and you'll find plenty of folks fawning over it--much like people took Lolita too seriously and banned it. There are three things you have to do to appreciate Grizzly Man the way I did: (1) disregard Treadwell's ranting and figure out the point of the footage he shot, (2) disregard Herzog's opining and think about (a) his selection of Treadwell's footage--no more than an hour out of over 100 Treadwell shot, and (b) his selection of other footage (Pointed absurdism, perhaps, especially regarding the coroner? An attempt to prove his ridiculous theorem?), and (3) do a little reader...err, viewer-response criticism. Consider your own reaction in contrast to the reaction likely intended by both filmmakers. Your response mirrors mine in that step (3) reveals a pretty high degree of absurdism, though it seems unintentional. That made me wonder about both Treadwell's and Herzog's intent even more--were they really both as ridiculous as they came across to you and to me? I kind of think yes, but can't know for sure, and either way the end result was a pretty stirring tragicomedy. With some nice footage of the Alaskan terrain and wildlife.
So therein lies my appreciation for Grizzly Man, take it as you will. I enjoy movies for mindless entertainment (see King Kong, probably see also the forthcoming Da Vinci Code) but when there are Nabokovian questions to consider PLUS a guy getting eaten by a bear, I usually enjoy them even more.
Hmm, "reader/viewer response" criticism (judging?) sounds too modern to me, though I think you make good points. It was just weird, though; I saw it with my parents at home, and all of us were just laughing at it by the end of the film. I felt kind of bad about it because of the supposedly tragic element, but it was just humorous by the end.
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