Werner Herzog and Grizzly Man

I watched this twice when I rented it just recently (I returned it a few days ago). And let me just say, I cannot get over the amazingness of this film. It's really one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. Not that I've seen very many. But I still mean that as very high praise. Some truly great documentaries make me almost prefer the documentary genre to fictional narrative films, which always weirds me out, but really, docs can do something so magical with the chaos of real life that fiction really can't do. Particularly, the kind of humor that springs from the clever editing and interpretation of real life and real human behavior just blows most fictional comedies out of the water. Truth really is stranger than fiction much of the time.

Sure there are times when I wish I could be watching polished actors instead of random people who seemed totally unaware of their own bizarre behavioral patterns, but that unawareness, that obliviousness, can be very endearing. It's just so... honest, I guess. And sort of voyeuristic, too... but I like that about it. As long as the director has a good eye for these people, and makes some sense of the madness that is real life.

It's just all so fascinating - "real" life.

It makes me wish I paid more attention to the nonfiction genre. But I don't. I'm sure there must be tons of mediocre documentaries made all the time, so I don't feel that bad - it's just that I generally only see the highly buzzed, arguably genius documentaries that come around only once or twice a year, and that deludes me into thinking all docs are that good. But they can't be. Can they?

The three nonfiction features I've seen that I've thought to be pretty brilliant are Bowling for Columbine, Spellbound, and Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man. I've seen some of the other notables (and missed several) but these three are riding high in my memory, Grizzly Man in particular. The way Herzog mines such pure comic gold from the deep and disturbing themes here is astonishingly impressive. The film has moments that are just absolutely priceless. It's probably the most laugh-out-loud hilarious thing I've seen all year (not just this new year, but last year, too). And while Timothy Treadwell, the manic-depressive, Grizzly-loving subject of the piece, is a hoot and a half and then some, the behind-the-scenes antics of Herzog himself are what make this the comic gold nugget that it is. His clever cutting, astute observations, and comically composed narration all add to the brilliance herein.

But all that aside, I'm convinced that what truly lifts this film into greatness is - and I'm totally serious here - Herzog's German accent and stiff vocal cadence. I don't know if he was playing it up to make it more comical, or if he just always speaks like that, or indeed if he was even aware of the effect his unique voice would have when he gave the film his narration... but my god, that narration MADE this movie. Between his Freud-esque German accent and the stilted way he speaks, Werzog sounds like a parody of every pretentious European academic who ever opened his mouth to talk. It's absolutely brilliant. It sets the absolutely perfect tone for this film, allowing us to laugh at the absurdity of the whole endeavor even as we revel in the razor-sharp incisiveness of the filmmaker. The juxtaposition of Herzog's calm disconnectedness with Treadwell's manic asides to himself and naive frolicking with the bears finds a whole new level of brilliance, as the differences in demeanor between spectator and subject are in even sharper contrast than their diametrically opposed worldviews. The moment-to-moment dynamics fit the meaning of the film perfectly; form fits function to a tee.

Brilliance. Sheer brilliance, I say.

Also... as revealed in a documentary on the DVD, all the music to this film was improvized. How cool is that? And again, it fits the film like a glove. Amazing.

Werner Zerzog is my hero. I love this man.