Grizzly Man

A couple of nights ago I watched the film "Grizzly Man". First off, the grizzly bear scares me. I have to say that when I was camping this summer in Grizzly country where signs yield "Grizzly Bears frequent this area"... I was a bit frightened. Now to think of a human spending so much time among the grizzly bear and in the most grizzly populated territories I thought, "CRAZY!"-You'd have to be crazy. Come to find out, Timothy Tredwell was indeed crazy. I don't think he started that way though. Timothy had several dissapointments in life and he turned to drinking and became an alchoholic. He retreated to the wilderness looking for a place of freedom from "his deamons", as Herzog puts it. Tredwell indeed found freedom from the bondage and prison of alchoholism in the wilderness; CAUSE THERE WAS NO ALCHOHOL OUT THERE! Because of this Timothy began to love the wilderness and love the bears and claims that the bears are what helped him and pretty much that he found salvation in the grizzly. Makes you feel sorry for the guy... he was looking for the right things, just in the wrong place. Timothy fell in love with the grizzly because in the wilderness he found acceptence (atleast that is what he believed he found there), to the point of beginning to really believe that he was one of them. That the Grizzly and the foxes were all his family. This mindset lead Tredwell to begin to dislike civilazation and live out of the belief that everyone was "after him." This is why the movie is rated R. Tredwell goes on several fits of rage where he expresses his anger towards humans with some very colorful communication. In Grizzly Man you find a movie that makes you laugh(you get to see how crazy some Alaskans are and the things they say and do just make you crack up) and I guess the thing I liked most about this movie is that it makes you think. What was so different about Tredwell? .... Was Timothy Tredwell really any different from any of us? He made himself home in a place where he felt like he belonged and felt like he was most accepted (even if it would eventually kill him). He looked for a place where he felt like his life had purpose and meaning (even if it was a self created purpose like for Tredwell it was "protecting the grizzlys"). We all want meaning and purpose in life, right? If treadwell found true salvation in the bears, he wouldn't have continued in his lifestyle of anger and confusion... He might have found freedom from the bottle, but inside he was still imprisoned. Anyways, if you like documentaries(which I do) or movie that could spark up a lot of conversation or thinking(which I do) I would suggest Grizzly Man as your next rental.