Life imitates art, they say, and there have been enough horror films based on the found-footage scenario--from The Blair Witch Project to Cloverfield--for the same scenario to work its way into the real world. But the footage recovered from the bodies of bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell and girlfriend Amie Huguenard--which includes the sounds of their gory final moments--isn't horrific, but the basis of an affecting portrait of a troubled and gentle man's retreat into nature. For over five years, Timothy Treadwell toured amongst a group of grizzlies in the wilds of an Alaskan national park, filming them closely with an eye for natural beauty. But director Werner Herzog--with typical humanism--ignores the nature to focus on Treadwell, re-cutting his frequent monologues to camera to show an increasingly paranoid fantasist who felt persecuted by the park authorities and had a neurotic habit of giving the bears cuddly human names. Treadwell withdraws into a citadel of self-inventions--recasting himself as an orphaned Australian, a Hollywood contender (second in line, it's claimed, to play Woody in Cheers) and a Byronic eco-warrior, projecting his new-age view of nature onto the Alaskan wilderness with tragic results for him and his girlfriend. But Herzog remains sympathetic to Treadwell, saluting him as a film-maker and reflecting on the sad and subconscious choices of men for whom society is unbearable. His essayistic film restores meaning and dignity to Treadwell and Huguenard's deaths. --Leo Batchelor
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