Grizzly Man is a film that could be looked at hundred different ways. And it will, no doubt polarize (pun intended) those who believe in what Timothy Treadwell spent the last ten years of his life doing, and those who consider him to be an utter fool who would have eventually met with his grisly end, because his sanity had been eroded by his withdrawal from, and hatred for the real world and the people who inhabit it. Whatever one's point of view regarding Treadwell, he was no doubt an ideal subject for Werner Herzog and in certain undeniable ways an uncanny substitute for Klaus Kinski.

No matter what you think of Treadwell's personal crusade of the mind, there's no getting around the fact that he was a nut. Funny, fascinating and in his own bizarre way mostly likable - but a peculiar, egocentric goofball Treadwell was without a doubt. The man was a living breathing documentary, complete with enough filmed footage for three sequels. In a sense you really can't hold this up as any kind of masterwork on the part of Herzog (and pales in comparison to this years crop of documentaries - particularly New York Doll and The March of the Penguins) because all Herzog had to do was edit it. The documentary was 90 per cent conceived and shot, before Herzog even started.

Perhaps this was the best thing for the famed German film-maker, as he was fresh off Incident At Loch Ness, which ranks very high on the list of the worst films ever made - documentary or otherwise. After a debacle like that, Grizzly Man must have been about as difficult an undertaking as slipping into a warm bath. Even so the film has his stamp on it. With so much of it already finished, Herzog sort of approaches the tragedy as a crime investigator, picking out footage of the most likely Grizzly suspects and eliciting opinion from those close to Treadwell. He also has the good sense to credit Treadwell for becoming a good filmmaker/documentarian in his own right. His lack of fear, or just plain insane bravado allowed him to capture yards and yards of spectacular footage, and some of the most interesting stuff involved Treadwell's own exposition. An obsessive perfectionist himself, Treadwell would shoot numerous takes of his summations and observations - his bizarre rants against poachers and government agencies which he imagines to be such grave threats to his beloved bears.

The film even reminds of The Blair Witch Project at times. There is one scene where a storm has leveled his small tent and he films himself inside as he expounds upon his courage and his foolishness as the wind howls and then something takes a swipe at his tent and he falls silent - quite genuinely afraid. Again the thing that makes Grizzly Man work is Treadwell's bizarre personality. A fey and skinny swish, with a blonde dutchboy, he speaks in a childishly high pitched voice and talks to the various animals like a cross between Tiny Tim and Mister Rogers. During one stretch he goes on about how his life would have been so much easier if he'd been homosexual, but alas he's a slave to the pussy, an unfortunate circumstance that has brought him not only pain, but is partially responsible for his decision to eschew civilization in favor of his hermitic, Waldenian existence.

There are several fascinating ironies that the film presents, both awfully tragic. The primary irony is that throughout his many years in the Alaskan wilderness he had always gone it solo, but during the fateful year that his beloved bears would prove to be his demise, he had brought along a lovely woman friend named Amie Hueganard. Treadwell's cameras recorded the audio portion of their mauling deaths, but Herzog chooses to spare us - only showing himself listening to their horrific final minutes. The other irony is that Treadwell had obviously shot all of this footage with the intention of making a documentary not unlike Grizzly Man and at one point even speaks of the fact that his work would be much more valid and compelling if he happened to be killed by these animals whose welfare he imagined to be his responsibility.

Just as a few points of clarification, the title Grizzly Man is a bit misleading as all the bears in the film are actually brown bears, most of which were well-protected by the National Park Service. This isn't really a film that should be critiqued - it is what it is, much of it fascinating, primarily because of the Grizzly Man himself. Quite a piece of work, Timothy Treadwell.