Timothy Treadwell was a complex man with a love for nature and grizzly bears. During the course of his life, Treadwell spent thirteen summers studying grizzly bears in the Alaskan peninsula. For the last five of these summers he recorded footage of his stay and interaction with the bears. The purpose of his studies was to draw attention to the grizzly bears, with the hopes that this attention would stop the poaching of bears. While Treadwell gained some fame for his work, the public’s real fascination was with the man behind the work. This fascination led Werner Herzog to create a compelling documentary titled Grizzly Man.Werner Herzog attempts to pull apart the mystery surrounding Treadwell’s life to reveal the man Timothy Treadwell was in his documentary Grizzly Man. Laced throughout Herzog’s documentary are video clips made by Treadwell himself. These video clips are an important part of Herzog’s documentary because they allow the viewer to see Treadwell as he saw himself, and allow the viewer to create their own opinions of Treadwell. However, it is hard to differentiate between what is purely acting and what is Timothy Treadwell’s true nature just by considering the films Treadwell created. The interviews conducted by Werner Herzog, as well as the comments he makes throughout the documentary show two different, and sometimes conflicting points of view when it comes to the life and identity of Timothy Treadwell.
Werner Herzog’s opinion is that Timothy Treadwell was a lost man with a profound and misunderstood love of nature. Timothy Treadwell held the opinion that he was a fierce, yet gentle warrior, and the lone protector of grizzly bears. Treadwell’s opinion is only viewable in the footage Herzog selected, a few clips from five years of film. In this sense, Treadwell’s footage creates an identity for Timothy Treadwell, while Herzog’s opinion is based off of the interviews he conducted and the footage of Treadwell he has seen (most of which was not included in Grizzly Man). Both men would not argue that Timothy Treadwell had a great passion for grizzly bears, but while Herzog would argue that Treadwell lost himself in the wild, Treadwell believes his life was saved by it.
Werner Herzog’s documentary creates a character while attempting to reveal the truth about Treadwell. Grizzly Man constructs an identity for Treadwell, not through Treadwell’s eyes, but through the eyes of Werner Herzog. In Herzog’s film he describes Treadwell as a man who has a “natural tendency toward chaos”. This is the phrase that defines Herzog’s perception of Treadwell the best. Herzog sees Treadwell as a lost man, one who tries to use the world of the grizzly bears to find himself and to free him from his past troubles. Despite the serious role Treadwell took protecting the grizzly bears, Herzog also portrayed him as a playful, wild and free person. By including video clips that Treadwell had created, Herzog shows a fun side of Treadwell, someone who laughed, played and ran with foxes.
Herzog conducted interviews with several of Treadwell’s friends, some of which helped him to portray the playful part of Timothy Treadwell’s personality. Warren Queeney, a personal friend of Treadwell, describes Treadwell’s ability to keep his hair over his forehead while body surfing and mentions Treadwell’s desire to create new personas. Warren Queeney says, showing that others took notice of his fun and wild personality, “Timmy always amused me.” In the interview with Kathleen Parker, another one of Timothy Treadwell’s close friends, Kathleen describes Treadwell as someone with a “rambunctious personality.” Herzog attempts to present Treadwell as a wild and free person, but also as someone who is serious about film making and protecting the bears he loves.
Although the clips Herzog chose to include in his documentary show Treadwell’s wild nature, they also help to support Herzog’s view of Treadwell as a “methodical filmmaker”. Many clips show Treadwell re-shooting takes that did not go the way he wanted them, positioning himself or the camera, or creating a character that would appeal to the people for whom he was making the film. When he was shooting film that was to be used in his tour of schools, he would speak in a higher voice and become ‘fun and wild’ Timothy. Often, he would make appeals to the public, like the following, in hopes that he could gain their support. “And you realize [the fox] has this gorgeous fur, and people are trying to kill him for it . . . We want this to end.”
At the beginning of Herzog’s documentary he describes another facet of Timothy Treadwell’s personality. Herzog sees Treadwell as a vulnerable man who wished to be one of the bears, who wanted to be accepted as a member of their world. In relation to this, Herzog says, “As if there was a desire in him to leave the confinements of his humanness and bond with the bears, Treadwell reached out, seeking a primordial encounter.”
Throughout the documentary, this remains Herzog’s key point and opinion when it comes to Treadwell; it defines Treadwell’s identity and motivation for entering the wilderness. To Herzog the idea that Treadwell could live among the bears and treat them as if they are his friends is naive. Herzog’s opinion is that Treadwell’s interference with nature made him less of a protector and more of an intruder. Treadwell believed that the bears lived in a secret world only he had access to, something Herzog disagrees with. Herzog mentionsthat he does not believe in a “secret world of the bears” and this contributes to the idea that Herzog saw Treadwell as more of an intruder in the bears lives than a protector. He states, ” 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.”
Along with his wish to be one of the bears, another motivation to enter the wilderness was the personal troubles he faced throughout his life. Herzog often describes Treadwell as a troubled man, searching for his purpose. He even compares the land that Treadwell claimed to protect to Treadwell’s soul, saying, “And more so, it seems to me that this landscape in turmoil is a metaphor of his soul.” Treadwell is also described as a man with many demons. Through Treadwell’s footage and the interviews conducted by Herzog, we come to find that one of Treadwell’s battles was one with drugs and alcohol. His inner demons drove him to the wild, where he could attempt to live in a world in which things are much simpler, where nature triumphs over everything else. Herzog portrayed Treadwell as a man who attached himself physically and emotionally to the land in order to find peace within his own soul. To Herzog, Treadwell’s identity was that of a man with a passionate, yet chaotic nature, a complex psyche and a need for inner peace.
Timothy Treadwell also recognized that he had faced troubles in the past, but saw his main trouble as the struggle to protect and hold onto what he loved most, the grizzly bears he spent many summers studying. Treadwell based his identity around the bears, and incorporated bears into every part of his life. The beginning of Herzog’s documentary shows some of Treadwell’s footage where he describes himself as a “kind warrior”, someone who is “noncommittal” and “non-invasive.” Although Treadwell made an attempt to be “noncommittal” and “non-invasive”, he was not always successful in doing so. More often than not, his actions show his description of himself to be incorrect.
Throughout the films Treadwell made, he is often seen touching the grizzly bears, petting foxes and physically interfering with nature. One part of Herzog’s documentary includes a clip Treadwell shot of a “navigational trail” he created for the fish to make a summer run, an interference with nature that does not match with the image Treadwell wants to create of someone who is strictly an observer. This back and forth contradiction is a part of Treadwell’s personality, a part of the identity his footage creates.
Timothy often describes himself as “wild person” who is “child-like” and “free”, he constructs an identity of someone who is “passive” and keeps to himself. This image of someone who is passive contradicts another image he creates. One clip of Treadwell’s footage shows him getting extremely angry with Park Services and the United States government. In the clip he is swearing and yelling angrily at the camera, even going as far as to single specific people out that he feels have wronged him and the bears he loves. This is not the only instance that Timothy Treadwell has a ‘conversation’ with his camera. ThroughoutGrizzly Man Herzog shows footage of Timothy Treadwell using his camera as a “confessional” of sorts.
Treadwell used his camera to reveal his innermost thoughts, as well as his joys and his sorrows. This raw footage shows Timothy in his truest nature and personality and provides a medium in which one can see how Treadwell saw himself and nature. In the following passage, Treadwell thanks God for the animals he looked after in the wilderness and expresses the thought that he had no life before he began his expeditions: “Thank you so much for letting me do this. Thank you so much for these animals, for giving me a life. I had no life. Now I have a life.”
Using his camera to reveal his troubles with women, he showed that although he wanted to be one of the bears, he recognized that he was human and wanted human companionship. Another clip shows Treadwell talking about his life before the bears, openly stating that he had an addiction alcohol and that it was the idea of protecting the bears that got him to quit drinking. The above mentioned examples show how passionate Treadwell was about the bears, but also how he tried to accept his role as a human being. Although his actions contradict this and one may be led to believe that Treadwell realized his inner turmoil, the identity he believed himself to have states otherwise. He was prone to highs and lows, a back and forth motion that is visible in his footage. This was Timothy Treadwell in his eyes, a man who lived for the grizzly bears, who was simple in that bears were the only things that gave meaning to his life. He celebrated his life among them, and refuted all those who stood in his way. To Timothy Treadwell passion was his identity; he threw himself into his work for the bears and based his identity on his life among them. He related all parts of his life and personality to the grizzly bears; in Timothy’s mind he was, in fact, a ‘Grizzly Man’.
It is the belief of Timothy Treadwell and Werner Herzog that Treadwell’s identity was constructed by a love of animals, from which many personality traits emerged. They both would agree that a main part of his identity was his love and passion for grizzly bears, however his motivations for entering the wild, and the consistency of his inner struggles are where they would disagree. Herzog saw Treadwell’s entrance into the wild as his opportunity to find himself and explore his own identity, but instead of finding himself he lost himself in an effort to leave his human state and become a bear. To Herzog, Treadwell was attempting to relate to bears in an intra specific level, rather than respecting the boundary between humans and animals. Treadwell’s inner struggle was that he could not figure out who he wanted to be, he could not find himself. Treadwell would disagree, stating that his love for bears was much more simplistic and that although he wanted to be accepted into their world, he wanted to do so by being their protector. After watching the footage of Treadwell included in Grizzly Man, it seems that his motivations for leaving civilization and heading out into the wilderness were to cure himself of his addiction and to protect the animals he loved, nothing more and nothing less.
There is no arguing the fact that Timothy Treadwell was a very complex individual, one who caused controversy in the American public and stirred the emotions of many individuals. Treadwell was a lost man, on the path to finding himself. Although his intentions were to protect the bears and to save himself while doing so, he crossed the line between human nature and the nature of animals. He tried too hard to be a bear, something that is both physically and emotionally impossible. As humans we have no clear way to communicate with animals, we are accustomed to a society in which body language is not as easy to interpret as the words we speak. We have developed a need for companionship and camaraderie with one another. What makes us human is our dependence on each other. Timothy Treadwell believed that that bears needed our protection and friendship and that by living and interacting with bears he could create his own identity based on theirs. His belief is too naive; our identities cannot be defined by nature and our interaction with it, but are defined by our interaction with other humans in the society we have created. Communication is key. We must recognize that we are a different species than bears or any other animal. Our identities begin with the fact that we are human and that it is impossible to be anything other than human, something that Timothy Treadwell forgot.
Works Cited
Grizzly Man. Dir. Werner Herzog. Lion’s Gate Films, 2005.
