Grizzly Man

So what is your overall impression of Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man from 2005?

Well, I'd seen it a few times, actually, and I watched it again for the podcast today and, and you know, it's a great movie, so the world doesn't need us to say, "This is a great movie," or why.

We'll just talk about what we think about it.

So what I love about this movie, my overall take is this: you know, in Citizen Kane at his birthday party they sing that song, "Who is this man?" You know, "Who is this man?" And that's what Citizen Kane is about, and it's what a lot of movies and a lot of books are about.

So I think that's a question that naturally comes up when you watch this, is who is this man? Who is Timothy Treadwell? Like, what, what is your take supposed to be on this guy? And the fact that it's very slippery and it's hard to get your arms around it i- is, is what makes it a good documentary.

It's very much like Into the Wild, the n- the book by Jon Krakauer.

You know that book?

Oh, yes.

Yeah.

So it's very much like that in, in terms of, like, you know, what are you supposed to think about this guy who had this romantic interest in nature, also in Alaska, but who finds out that, you know, nature is red in truth and, in tooth and claw.

The other thing I thought when I watched it today was that, um, there's a great essay by a philosopher named Thomas Nagel, came out in 1974, called What Is It Like to Be a Bat? Do you know this essay?

Yes.

You do? Wow, that's great.

Okay, so it's all about the unknowable, subjective experience of a, of another mind, right? So in philosophy there's a thing called the problem of other minds, like, you know, you and I both know what it's like to be a person, but we can't get 100% into each other's heads.

Like, I can't see the world the way you do, right? So what if you took an extreme example like a bat, right? And, and, and you can't comprehend the world through elocution, right? We kind of think, like, a dog kind of sees the world the way we do, but that's 'cause we anthropomorphize the dog.

The way the dog's sense of smell works is, is totally unknowable to us, right? And a bat's another extreme example.

So I think what's cool about this movie is that I [laughs] thought about, um, the Thomas Nagel essay because Treadwell thinks he knows what it's like to be a bear.

The pilot says at one point, um, you know, "These aren't people in bear costumes," like the way Yogi Bear is or a bear in a Disney movie, but that's kind of how he approaches these animals.

But the whole point of the movie, or at least o- much, much of the movie is how dead wrong he is, that they're not like that.

That's when w- you know, when he...

There's all this evidence that the bears don't want him around, and that he's not one of them, but he really, really wants to be one, and that's his fatal flaw.

An alternative title for this movie, I thought, if I had to market it, would be...

I mean, Grizzly Man's the best title, would be Diary of a Failed Werewolf.

Right? Because that's what...

You know, in, in, in every werewolf movie, the man becomes the beast and gets to live out these fantasies and these beast-like things, and then he goes back to being a man, and that's not always pleasant, but that's kind of what it's about.