Grizzly Man or Insane Man?
Last night, Mike and I watched “Grizzly Man,” a movie about Tim Treadwell, a man who dedicated his life to “protecting” grizzly bears on the Alaskan Peninsula. Treadwell took video cameras with him each summer to film the bears and his interactions with them. After 13 years with the bears, Treadwell and his girlfriend were killed, savagely mauled by a bear while the audio ran on one of his cameras.
The movie was very well done and showed both sides: those who think Treadwell was a hero and those who question to wisdom of his decision to interact in such a way with these wild animals. Clips from friends, family, colleagues, and those who learned of Treadwell only after his death (such as the coroner) allow the story to take shape.
After watching the film, I was left with the impresion that Treadwell was an egomanic full or paranoid delusions ungrounded in reality. In many of the clips included in the movie, Treadwell is waxing poetic about how he “beat” the U.S. Park Service, about how he “saves” the bears from poachers (though experts say there are few, if any, in the area), about how dangerous the work he does is, and how singularly amazing he is for doing that work. He coos constantly at the bears about how much he loves them, and is shown in constant physical contact with them. I can’t help but think that socializing the animals- domesticating them, in some sense- isn’t good for their long-term existence. So was he really saving the bears? Was he really protecting them? Did Treadwell, as some claim, deserve to die such a horrible, painful death?
Who knows, I guess.