First Sea Lord Blindly Recommends: "Grizzly Man"

Today's Special

Great german art movie director Werner Herzog (!), best known as the man behind Fitzcaraldo, finally gets to Alaska in Grizzly Man, a documentary on the life and death as bear dinner of Tim Treadwell, the man obsessed by bears who lived among them for many years - in the sense of petting wild bears, setting up tents in the middle of their trails, and eventually screaming for his girlfriend to hit the bear that was eating him with a frying pan, the only defense he permitted himself and the direct result of which was that she ended up as desert.

Composed of new interviews and lots of old footage, Herzog himself narrates the movie. Herzog's perspective is that "the common denominators of the universe are chaos, hostility and murder," which is at the very least distinct from Treadwell, who was seeking communality with hungry bears. But even considering the incredible amount of ditzy trouble Treadwell went to to actually get eaten, he was a genuine advocate for our fellow hairy grumpy creatures; every time Alaska Fish and Game comes up with some new helicopter borne brown bear machine-gunning rule, I fall more and more on Treadwell's sweet and softly deluded side.

I missed it at the Seattle International Film Festival, but if it doesn't show in Anchorage soon someone is missing a golden opportunity to rent out a theater. The very bearish critics in Seattle gave in an unambigious "A."