[pct-l] "Grizzly Man" on TV tonight

[wayneskraft at comcast.net (Wayne Kraft)]

So sorry, but the time I have allotted to film criticism for the  
month of February has expired. I am busy teaching my Golden Retriever  
to be a fox.  He is very large for a fox and the lessons are not  
going well.  Treadwell was a lunatic who wanted to be a bear and  
Herzog is a filmmaker who wants to be a lunatic, but my dog just  
wants to be a dog.  I guess the truth is still the truth, no matter  
from what angle it is filmed.

Wayne Kraft


On Feb 4, 2006, at 6:16 PM, Pea Hicks wrote:

>
>
> Wayne Kraft wrote:
>
>> I watched it, too.  It was definitely a cinematic study of a  
>> bipolar,  paranoid, addictive personality rather than bears.  I  
>> suppose  studying such personalities is valuable to the extent  
>> that it might  enable us to bring cure or comfort to such tortured  
>> souls, but  Herzog's "study" of Treadwell was no more scientific  
>> or useful than  Treadwell's "study" of Grizzlies. In fact there  
>> seems to be a  striking parallel between Herzog's rapt fascination  
>> with Treadwell  and Treadwell's similar fixation on the  
>> Grizzlies.  Likewise, Herzog  seemed to insert himself into this  
>> film in somewhat the same way  Treadwell featured himself in his  
>> footage.  Herzog was not obtrusive  exactly, but how many  
>> director's appear at all in their films?   Herzog found himself on  
>> screen quite a bit here.  The irony of it  seemed obvious enough  
>> to me that I concluded that it could not have  been unintentional.
>
> the thing you have to keep in mind about herzog is that he's not a  
> "by the books" documentarian. his background is in art/experimental  
> film, and he approaches making his documentaries from a decidedly  
> and unapologetically "art school" subjective viewpoint. it very  
> much helps to be familiar with herzog's work and methods when going  
> into a film like this, or at least to know that he's not a film- 
> maker who's concerned with trying to showing "objective reality" at  
> all. inserting himself and his opinions into his documentaries is  
> one way he reminds the audience that ALL such films that purport to  
> show "reality" are always editorialized, though most of the time  
> the op-ed work goes on in more manipulative ways underneath the  
> surface.
>
>
> girlscout
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