Grizzly Man (2005) [610166]

Grizzly Man (2005)
Encounters at the End of the World (2007)
Happy People – A year in Taiga (2010)

Wener Herzog

Werner Herzog was born in Munich on September 5, 1942. He grew up in a remote
mountain village in Bavaria and studied History and German Literature in Munich and
Pittsburgh He made his first film in 1961 at the age of 19. Since then he has produced, written,
and direct ed more than sixty feature and documentary films.1

Grizzly Man (2005)

A docudrama that centers on amateur grizzly bear expert Timothy Treadwell. He
periodically journeyed to Alaska to study and live with the bears. He was killed, along with his
girlfrie nd, Amie Huguenard, by a rogue bear in October 2003. The films explores Treadwell's
compassionate life as he found solace among these endangered animals.2
'Bear whisperer' Timothy Treadwell's life was a tangle of passionate environmental
activism, idealistic half -truths and outright lies. And with his shocking death in October 2003, it
all began to unravel. What few knew about Treadwell was that much of his life was an invention.

Timothy Treadwell, the avowed bear man of the Alaska wilderness, live d poor and little
known for most of his 46 years despite a desire for the spotlight of celebrity. He claimed to have

1 http://www.wernerherzog.com
2 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427312/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_18

led a life of drugs, brawls and booze until, in the late 1980s, he found his way to the grizzlies,
most recently in Katmai National Park an d Preserve on the Alaska Peninsula about 300 miles
southwest of Anchorage. His cause: to save them from hunters and poachers
who apparently didn't exist. Those efforts brought him national recognition.

He attracted even more when he told David Letterman o n national television that the
sometimes ferocious grizzly bears were really nothing more than big "party animals."
But the party came to a macabre end when, on Oct. 6, 2003, Treadwell and his girlfriend were
found dead after being attacked by a 1,000 -poun d grizzly bear. Though captured on an audio
recording, the deaths remain the topic of much debate. They brought to a dramatic end what had
become Treadwell's Hollywood life, but they opened a new chapter in the saga of the man some
had come to call "the be ar whisperer."3

Encounters at the End of the World (2007)

'Werner Herzog' takes his camera to Antarctica where we meet the odd men and women
who have dedicated their lives to furthering the cause of science in treacherous conditions. A
scientist studies neutrinos, which are everywhere, yet elusive; he likens them to spirits.
A researcher's nighttime performance art includes contorting her body into a luggage
bag. A survival guide teaches his students to survive white -out conditions by wearing cartoon –
face buckets over their heads. Animal researchers milk mother seals as part of their study.
Volcanologists offer advice on what to do when a volcano erupts. A pipefitter shows us
the anomaly in his hands that he says are a sign he descended from Atzec royalty. A former
Colorado banker drives what he has christened Ivan the Terra Bus. An underwater diver shows
his colleagues DVDs of apocalyptic sci -fi films like Them! (1954). And – thoug h Herzog
declares he's not "making another film about penguins" – we meet a penguin researcher who
answers … Written by J. Spurlin4
There is a hidden society at the end of the world. One thousand men and women live
together under unbelievably close quarters in Antarctica, risking their lives and sanity in search
of cutting -edge science.5

Happy People – A year in Taiga (2010)

In the center of the story is the life of the indigenous people of the village Bakhtia at the
river Yenisei in the Siberian Taiga. The camera follows the protagonists in the village over a
period of a year. The natives, whose daily routines have barely cha nged over the last centuries,
keep living their lives according to their own cultural traditions. The expressive pictures are
accompanied by original sound bites quoting the villagers.6

Werner Herzog presents a picturesque documentary about the life of th e indigenous
people living in the heart of the Siberian Taiga.
The camera follows a trapper through all four seasons of a year. Siberia extends from Ural to the

3 http://www.wernerherzog.com/films -by.html
4 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1093824/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr _15
5 http://www.wernerherzog.com/films -by.html
6 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1683876/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_11

Pacific and is one and a half times the size of the USA. 38 million people live in this giant a rea,
the majority of them in the prosperous south.

In the heart of the Siberian wilderness, deep in the taiga and far away from civilization,
300 people inhabit a small village Bakhtia at the river Yenisei. There are only two ways to reach
this outpost: o ne is by helicopter, the other by boat. Here, deep in the wilderness, there is no
telephone available, nor running water or medical aid. The people are on their own. The natives,
whose daily routines have barely changed over the last centuries, keep living their lives
according to their own cultural traditions.
If the human civilization was destroyed, they would survive – thanks to the knowledge of their
forefathers…7

After making a brief introduction on the films I want to analyze and compare, I would
like to say that these films are very inspiring for me and for the projects I work on, and I hope
they will be for others as well .
Werner Herzog is a very intriguing and inter esting filmmaker and also writes and direct
documentaries about nature and man's relationship with nature in our days.
These films are a good example of this kind of description of how people interact with
nature in their lives. What makes these movies so intriguing and captivating is the fact that in all
there is a story trying to lo ok at the world from the perspective of people living in those
environments.
In the movie Grizzly Man we have the scene where Mr. Treadwell Timothi talks to the
fox he calls Spirit and then Ghost, so we have in Happy People one of the two protagonists of t he
movie that talks about the dog as an important part of the family being the only one with which
he remains in the woods and the greatest hope when he goes for hunting , that there is no good
hunter without a good hunting dog.
00:26:28 Hi, Spirit. Hello b aby. Coming down. What are you doing to the hat? Where's that hat
going? Hey, whds stealing that hat? Let me see that hat. Ghost, I want that hat. Oh, man. Gost is
bad. Ghost, what are you doing with that hat? Ghost, that's a very important hat. Drop it. H ey!
0:27:07
1:00: 45 For the hunter, the important thing is that the dog works for him. You are getting
attached to it. Sometimes the dog becomes a member of your family. The dog feeds us. Ypu are
no hunter without a dog. At three months I can tell a good d og without fail. The puppy begins to
stalk the cat, sniffs at its footprints. It attacks chickens. Anything. If you have a good dog, take
puppies from good dogs. And of course, it depends on how you bring it up.If you take a good
puppy and put it inside an d keep it there for six months, surely it will not make a good hunter
when you take it into the taiga. 1:02:27

7 http://www.wernerherzog.com/films -by.html

We can also see from these texts that man's relationship with the animal is different but
that it exists and is quite clearly revealed in these t wo segments of the film.
Herzog captured incredible moments which can not be spoken . I noticed that in the
documentary "Encounters at the End of the World" he uses a rather pertinent artistic moemnt in
which he wants to show how the protagonist gets into t he deep of the frozen ocean and as if he
goes to another land enter a realm of fairy tale and unknown.
00:39:56 WH:The water under the ice isminus 2 degrees Celsius.
-That keeps us insulated from the cold.Want me to open it up?
– Yeah. Ready?
– Yeah.
-Dive operation. Time right now is.I'll give you a call back at about 2. 00:40:53

00:40:58 WH:To me, the divers look like astronautsfloating in space.
But their work is extremely dangerous.They are diving without tethers
to give them more free range.But he re you can't trust a compass.
So close to the magnetic pole, the needlewould point straight up or straight down.
Somehow you have to findyour way back to the exit holeor you are trapped under the ceiling of
ice. 00:41:27

We can say that the same vision is also shown when the two protagonists of the “Happy
People – A year in the Taiga” documentary go by land this time that in the Taiga forest.
00:48:01 The occasion is celebrated with vodka -vicious as jet' fuel. I have tried all sorts of jobs
here on the collective farm… but hunting is the best – just the ticket. Nobody tells me What to do.
can hunt or rest. Am my own man. And hunting is great fun. 00:49:15

00:49:16 Now out on their own…the trappers become what they essentially are – happy people .
Acco mpanied only by their dogs,they live off the land. They are completely self -reliant.They are
truly free. No rules, no taxes, no government… no laws, no bureaucracy , No phones, no radio.
Equipped only with their individual values and standard of conduct. Mikhail Tarkovsky -from the
family of the famous filmmaker -knows what it' takes to live out here. 00:49:57

In both scenes we have a separation of the things we understand as beeing home and a
union with the unknown and the danger from all points of view. W e have the courage and the
mist of intelligent and skilled people, portraits of true survivors.
The ocean, the forest, and the Taiga are the three mysterious realms of these
documentaries that have in common the way man manages in them and the way nature is
responding to the life of man.
Herzog made observation s about how people in diferent locations far away from
civilization enjoy , he describes using more imagies dent voice over to explaine a fragment of joy
of being together.

So he describes in the movie "Meetings at the End of the World" the people in that
village who gather in one place , a bar and watch a show made by a veteran of those places and
whose life story is very dense and full of events.
01:03:07 This is how you get yourself to any place in An tarctica.
HERZOG: At the so -called Freak Train event at one of McMurdo's bars,Karen is, not
surprisingly,one of the most popular performers.
This is her famous "TraveI as hand luggage" act.
WOMAN: Yeah, take her home.
ALL CHEERING 01:03:39

In the movie "Happy People – One Year in the Taiga," we have a scene that highlights
communion in that village where protagonists are present at Christmas, each year celebrated on
January 6th in Russia being on the Orthodox caldera in the old style.
01:29:39 For Gennad y and all of them, this is a happy return.
Christmas Is celebrated In Russia on January 6.
The entire village participates. 01:30:24

Both visual fragments want to highlight something human about what's happening in
these villages, in contradiction with what will not be featured in Grizzly Man, because Timothy
Treadwell is the character which is not a hero like all others protagonists from the previous tow
documentary movies .
You can say if a movie is good as it ends, the end of a movie even if it's docum entary
tells a lot about the movie. I chose to finish by showing the final replies of these films and
matching them with what I have said so far and with the conclusion for each film as well as with
a succinct comparison.
He does not want to judge Treadwei l or clarify anything about his person. It has an
apotheotic end that puts our thoughts on, says that nature remains nature and that looking at
nature is like looking at ourselves.
01:40:06 Treadweil is gone.The argument how wrong or how right he was disap pears Into a
distance, Into a fog. What remains is his footage. And while we watch the animals in their joys of
being, in their grace and ferociousness, a thought becomes more and more clear, that it is not so
much a look at wild nature as It is an Insight Into ourselves, our nature. And that, for me, beyond
his mission, gives meaning to his fife and to his death. 01:40:44

The end of this documentary is very beautiful and the story ends poetically: Well, we're
alone again . Hunters are resuming their way to Taiga, and life resumes their normal circuit for
everyone.

01:30:55 The stay for the trappers will be a short' one.
After a few days and nights… they will return to the taiga for the remaining months of winter
This is the life they love. Well, we're al one again. 01:31:48

This documentari hase a philosophical ending, with some kind of mysticism that makes
us think, where you seem to be at the edge of the world, and you just do not have a place to go,
you're heading right up to the cosmos and the univers e, is just like an mystic escape .
01:36:09 There is a beautiful saying by an American, a philosopher, Alan Watts,
and he used to say that through our eyes,the universe is perceiving itself,
and through our ears, the universe is listening to its cosmic harm onies,
and we are the witness through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory,
of its magnificence. 01:36:37

Tank you !

Master of Documentary Filmmaking
Ciorăneanu Cristian Marian
cioraneanu.cristian@yahoo.com