Transversing Different Visions

Shaelene G. Moler

Prof. Richard Simpson

History and Theory of Documentary Film

7 December 2020

Transversing Different Visions

In any biography, one can expect the author’s fascination with the subject’s character and being, but in Werner Herzog’s biographical documentary Grizzly Man, viewer’s can expect not only the story of one man’s life, but a reflection on his ideology, and imperfections. Grizzly Man, which is a documentary film directed and narrated by the German filmmaker Werner Herzog, is a film based on the life of Timothy Treadwell, and Treadwell’s mission to reduce/eliminate the stigmatization against grizzly bears, and protect the areas in which they live. Released in the August of 2005, this film illustrates the life of a devoted conservationist, who fell in love with the bears because of, and in spite of his own personal issues. The film is strongly composed of both “found” diary footage by Timothy Treadwell himself, and interviews conducted by Herzog featuring a variety of different people who knew Treadwell, or had participated in his recovery after his death. That being said, this documentary is one that has been composed without Treadwell’s input on not only the presentation of himself, but the presentation of his ideas, beliefs, and methods, and instead, was edited to reflect Herzog’s relationship to the material/subject, and present a distorted visual argument for and against Treadwell’s ideology through editing.

In order to discuss a film’s editing process and composition, it is important to first discuss not only how we categorize a film, but how a film should be approached because of its category. When categorizing Grizzly Man, it is most important to acknowledge its compositional elements. Are there interviews, or is it found footage? When it was filmed, did the subject know that their were being filmed, or was the camera hidden? How involved was the director/filmmaker in the process? Considering this, according to Bill Nichol’s text Introduction to Documentary 3rd edition, Grizzly man can be considered a strong example of a blending of documentary modes. By definition, Grizzly Man can be categorized into both the participatory mode, and as an individual biography featuring diary/journalistic elements. 

Grizzly Man can be categorized into the participatory mode, because both filmmakers, if you consider Treadwell a filmmaker alongside Herzog, are actively involved in the creation of the film, and directly address the films subjects. At the time of filmmaking, when Treadwell was the lone filmmaker, the bears were his subject, and he directly engaged with them, and when Herzog assumed control of the films vision after Treadwell’s untimely death, he shifted the focus to Treadwell as an individual subject, and directly engaged with those he interviewed about Treadwell, as well as had a “conversation” with Treadwell’s ideology through the films narration. In Nichols’ chapter on “Poetic, Expository, and Reflexive Modes,” Nichols states that the participatory mode can be characterized by “what we learn from personal interactions; what people say and do when confronted or engaged by others; what can be conveyed by interviews and other forms of encounter,” and that it “stresses the speech between the filmmaker and subject, especially in interviews. [With a] heavy reliance on sync sound, but may also utilize voice-over; filmmaker retains only partial creative control of sound” (Nichols 109). In Grizzly man, we not only see both filmmaker’s assume little creative control over the sound (consider both the bear’s reactions and actions, as well as Treadwell’s films and the interviewee’s responses), but we also see elements of documenting the encounter through Treadwell’s interaction with the bears in his video diary’s, and Herzog’s interviews with people about Treadwell, where he actively questioned their relationships to and opinions of Treadwell, and Treadwell’s mission/purpose.

The other element of this film is the fact that it is both an individual documentary, and diary/ journal. Had this film began with a solid vision in mind, and had been completely carried out by Treadwell himself, the film may not have been considered either of these, and instead, could of resulted as a first-person essay in which the documentary would be a “Personal account of some aspect of the author/ filmmaker’s experience or point of view,” or an advocacy/ promotion of a cause documentary that “stress/es convincing, compelling evidence and examples; urge adoption of a specific point of view,” or maybe even a combination of the two. But, since Treadwell had passed away, and Herzog had assumed control of the film’s vision, the footage that Treadwell had shot became diary/ journal style footage because Treadwell had lost control of the film, featured in an individual or group profile/ biography. According to Nichols, what makes a film a diary/ journal is it’s features of “daily impressions that may begin and end somewhat arbitrarily,” and what makes a film an individual or group profile/ biography, is how it “recounts [the] story of [a] person’s or group’s maturation and distinctiveness” (Nichols 107). Considering this, the reason that Grizzly Man can be considered a film of both Models, is the separation of the filmmaker’s filmed content, and how the purpose of that content had shifted with the transition from Treadwell’s creative vision, to Herzog’s creative vision. What this means is, when Treadwell’s footage was given to Herzog, it was in it’s raw form, and focused on Treadwell’s experience with bears in Alaska, in his eyes, this would have been a diary/ journal because it did not have a guided script, and was filmed on Treadwell’s impulse. Whereas, the interviews and editing process that was imposed on Treadwell’s footage in the final product guide’s the film into becoming a biography on Treadwell for who he was, and what his purpose and ideologies were. 

To say that Herzog’s editing process is responsible for the film’s composition and categorization, is a statement that must be said with a grain of salt. What this means is, when discussing the editing of a film, it is important to address how we may define editing, and pinpointing where exactly the editing process begins; maybe even for both filmmakers. In Grizzly Man, if we go by the definition of Fredrick Wiseman in his article “Editing as a Four-Way Conversation,” the editing process began with Timothy Treadwell. In this article, Wiseman states “Any documentary, mine or anyone else’s, made in no matter what style, is arbitrary, biased, prejudiced, compressed, and subjective. Like any of its sisterly or brotherly fictional forms it is born in choice - choice of subject matter, place, people, camera angles, duration of shooting, sequences to be shot or omitted, transitional material and cutaways” (Wiseman 279). That being said, the editing began with Treadwell’s creative vision, intentions, beliefs, and how those things had affected the composition of the shot. 

Furthering this, if we place the perspective of Wiseman as a filmmaker on Treadwell’s creative decisions and motivations, as well as consider the philosophies of Tom Gunning in his article “Embarrassing Evidence: The Detective Camera and the Documentary Impulse,” we are met with a sort of contradiction in considering Werzog as the lone creative visionary for this film. Continuing in his article, Wiseman states “the motivation to record a particular sequence may result from the way someone walks or is dressed; or a hunch, the intuition that something interesting may develop when two people begin to talk. When I have that feeling I’ve learned to follow it, which is not to say the hunch is always right but rather that in not following it no risk is taken and therefore the risk of missing a ‘good’ sequence occurs” (Wiseman 280). If we place this “hunch” on Treadwell in his filming process, we can consider most of his filming (at least the films that was chosen to be featured by Herzog in the final product) was filmed on a “hunch,” a “hunch” that was motivated by Treadwell’s love for the bears. This is illustrated by the frequent scenes featuring the bear’s natural behavior, with an attempt to emphasize their natural behavior, and “good nature.” 

This “hunch,” is what Tom Gunning would call the documentary impulse, and it is something that is guided by our fascinations of our own lives and views, that being said, it can pose its own . In his article, Tom Gunning states “The emerging discipline of anthropology (with its ties to colonial exploration) undoubtedly provided a context in which the recording of details of daily life (which otherwise might seem unworthy of notice or smack of simple snooping) could gain a respectable veneer. However, a new fascination with daily life and a nearly prurient interest in uncovering scandalous or otherwise decent material also played an important role in the genre’s popularity” (Gunning 52). Putting this in context of Treadwell, and perhaps even Herzog in some of his scenes such as the spreading of Treadwell’s ashes towards the end of the film, what can be seen is, the motivation behind the filming of these moments is based on an impulse to document what we believe is important to our lives, memory, and purpose. Gunning follows this quote with “But the very pleasure of the film (and its recognizable place as an ancestor of television’s domestic situation comedy) also reveals the strong attraction that the temptation of documenting ordinarily concealed aspects of daily life still exerts” summarizing this concept (Gunning 63).

With Treadwell’s editorial influence in mind, we approach how this was morphed and distorted by Herzog’s own editorial practices and ideas with the shift between the filmmakers. Before acknowledging the technical aspects of the editing, it is important to understand what had influenced Herzog, and how this influence contradicts the visions of Treadwell. In his written reaction an analysis of Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North, Fatimah Tobing Rony expresses “As Flaherty himself explained, he did not want to show the Inuit as they were at the time of the making of the film, he did not want to show the Inuit as they were at the time of making the film, but as (he thought) they had been” (Rony 101). Much like Flaherty, Herzog utilized film that was rehearsed and reshot in many cases by Treadwell, and used it not to fulfill Treadwell’s personal vision as it was, but instead, fulfill his own vision, on what he believed to be the most honest depiction of Treadwell as an individual, because of his own “relationship” to him, and the material Treadwell had created. From here, Herzog can be considered someone who practiced ethnographic taxidermy, which Rony defined and described as:

“I call the mode of representation of the ‘ethnographic’ which emerged from the impulse of taxidermy. Taxidermy seeks to make that which is dead look as if it were still living. In his study on the impact of the taxidermic impulse on the writing of history in the nineteenth century, Stephen Bann quotes British taxidermist Charles Waterton who complained that the unadorned dead beast was ‘a mere dried specimen, shrunk too much in this part, or too bloated in that; a mummy, a distortion, an hideous spectacle’” (Rony 101).

In attempt to represent Treadwell in what he believed to be the most honest representation of him from the eyes of a man looking back on a past life, Herzog sacrifices true authenticity, even in the moment where he tosses the romantic lens. He does this, through the exercise of selective editing, where he sifted through the material filmed by Treadwell, and contrasted Treadwell’s filmed footage with the contents of the interviews conducted by Herzog.

There is a few scenes in the film in particular where this is true, and they are scenes that come towards the end of the film which feature various montages of Timothy Treadwell’s “darkest moments” that he himself had captured on film. At first, it is instinctual to consider these shots and scenes as truth, because they were filmed by Treadwell himself, and he probably expected to cut some of these moments out in order to fulfill the purpose of his creative vision. In addition to that, he also seemed to film as a way to distract himself in times of boredom, or express himself in times of distress. But, as the footage is pieced together by Herzog, the moments in which Treadwell was most vulnerable, or his emotions are most heightened, is presented as a contradiction to his message and the interviews accompanying them. In these scenes, we see a variety of different shots, that all seem to present different emotions that Treadwell had experienced as he was out in the field. There is scenes of him crying over a bee that had died on a fireweed plant, as well as videos of him lashing out to camera about other park professionals who claim to be conservationists who care about the wellbeing of the bears that Treadwell was studying. To this, we bring in the ideas of Vsevolod Pudovkin in his article “[On Editing]” where he writes “One must learn to understand that editing is in actual fact a compulsory and deliberate guidance of the thoughts and associations of the spectator” reminding audiences that in editing, the film is presented in a way that the director wants to pursued or inform the audience (Pudovkin 10).

One question still remains, and that question is, how should we judge this film, based on it’s truth, and the answer to this, lies in an interview conducted by Richard Bernstein in his article “‘Roger and Me’: Documentary? Satire? Or Both” where Bernstein shares Michael Moore’s own philosophy on film truth which reads “Mr. Moore has said in interviews that he did compress events, but that his film nonetheless is true to what actually happened in Flint, his hometown, where, he believes, General Motors did abandon its social responsibility to help workers it was laying off” (Bernstein par. 20). Putting this in context of Grizzly Man, if Herzog were to discuss his own editorial process, he would likely say that the film is true to what he believed had actually happened to Timothy Treadwell in his journey to prove the world was wrong about Grizzly bears and had to protect them.

In closing, because this documentary had been composed without Treadwell and his input, the presentation of his ideas, beliefs, and methods were edited to reflect Herzog’s relationship to Treadwell and his filmed material, and presented a distorted visual argument on Treadwell’s ideology through his editing process. Although this does not necessarily invalidate the films truth, but instead offers an excellent example on how truth can transverse in the editing process, especially between two filmmakers with very different creative visions. 

Works Cited

Bernstein, R. (1990, February 01). 'Roger and Me': Documentary? Satire? Or Both? Retrieved December 08, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/01/movies/roger-and-me-documentary-satire-or-both.html

Gunning, T. (1999). Embarrassing Evidence: The Detective Camera and the Documentary Impulse.

Nichols, B. (2017). How Can We Differentiate among Documentary Models and Modes? What Are the Poetic, Expository, and Reflexive Modes? In Introduction to documentary (3rd ed., pp. 104-158). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Pudovkin, V. (n.d.). [On Editing]. From Film Technique, 7-12.

Rony, F. T. (1996). Chapter Four: Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography: Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North. The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle, 99-126.

Wiseman, F. (1994). Editing as a Four-Way Conversation. Dox: Documentary Quarterly, (No. 1), 278-282.