MovieChat Forums > Grizzly Man (2005) Discussion > Lost a little respect for Werner Herzog ...

Lost a little respect for Werner Herzog when...


First of all, let me say that this is one of my favourite films, albeit an often uncomfortable one to watch, and this isn't intended as an attack on the general integrity of the director as I think he did a fantastic job in giving a balanced analysis of a complicated individual.

I did however feel that the scene where Werner Herzog listened to the audio in front of Jewel Pavolak came across as being in extremely poor taste. It seemed to me an unnecessarily exploitative action for reasons I'll explain.

Jewel is a woman who knew Timothy Treadwell intimately, a woman for whom to listen to the audio recording was understandably too much to deal with. So why did Herzog's staging of a scene where he does indeed listen to the recording in front of her need to happen at all? As he did this, with the camera focusing in slowly on Jewel's face as she in turn watches Herzog's reaction closely, on the verge of tears, not only made a voyeur out of her - but out of the viewer too. In other words, we are watching her watching Herzog as he himself listens, as voyeur, to horror he has no right to listen to, let alone a personal or professional need to hear.

His listening to that recording through headphones would have added nothing in itself alone to the film, so this scene inherently required us to watch Jewel's reaction to Herzog's own for it to have impact.

In other words, Jewel was sat there in the first place for the sole purpose of refracting emotion back at us, the audience; essentially, I felt she was rather 'used' in this moment.

I didn't like it one bit, and yes - it seemed massively exploitative to me. I know there are a million and one arguments against what I have said, and many of them will be theoretically valid I'm sure, but I personally lost a little respect for Herzog at this moment in the film.

This is not a cinematic criticism of this point in the film, rather one coming from a point of compassion for Jewel Pavolak.



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When I read the topic title, this is exactly the moment I was thinking would be mentioned.

You say it very well.

I find it very hard to find his intent behind doing it. Why he did it, why he kept it in the movie. I try to understand it. I suppose the movie would have viewers with a strong curiosity to what's in that tape. This demonstrates why he would not include it in his film. Still, it did not need to happen or be shown, nor did he need to put Jewel through that or film it.

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Hey crombot, thanks for your reply - good to know others out there felt the same as I did watching it.

Interesting isn't it, the question of why Herzog made this decision to include it in Grizzly Man.

There's an interview on YouTube with him and Mark Kermode (the famous one where Herzog got shot by an air rifle mid-flow - in fact I kinda like the idea that it was Jewel Pavolak, camped 100 meters away in the bushes, who took aim that day..."this is for Timmy...BANG!") - but it's an interesting interview because, being heavily reverential on Kermode's part, it gives the impression that Herzog rather enjoys the idea that his work gains nobility and is recognized because of its never shying away from the ugliness of reality. He really seems to relish this accolade, that he's the unblinking eye...this is fine, and indeed admirable in some way, but I just cringed thinking "what if Jewel watches this?".

That scene...such poor taste.

On a separate note, if you enjoy documentaries and haven't seen it yet, I THOROUGHLY recommend 'American Movie' (1997) - it's my personal favourite and sticks with you long after you've seen it.

Cheers, all the best



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I found it an extremely powerful moment in the movie. I do not think it detracts at all except add a sense of 'we don't need to hear it' although we may want to. We know how it goes, and so does Jewel. We just need to know it happened.

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What would you add?

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not to mention the headphones he is wearing are OPEN EAR headphones, meaning that in any "real" situation, the audio would also be coming out of the headphones (not very loudly, but still noticeable). Just more confirmation on how false this is.

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If that's the case, I'm not sure it makes the scene 'false', but all the more distasteful on Herzog's part.

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If it helps you she served as more than an interview partner in the movie and holds a co executive producer credit ( the film would not have been possible without her active contribution and the material in her possesion ).
She also has given interviews with Herzog around release.
I don't think that anything there happened without her complete consent and furthermore I would argue that the scene is integral because it narrativly replaces the actual audio and explains it's absense from the film at the same time.
It's quite an ingenious artistic solution actually.
Herzog is all about connecting the audience to whatever the subject is and I don't find it hard to imagine that he quite easily convinced Jewel of his artistic intention - if he had to at all.

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I lost respect for Herzog since he sounds like a MORON!

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I agree. The existence and impact of the audio track is acknowledged without having to play it.

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I think the ex-girlfriend was fine with the situation and no problem with him doing it. I didn't like the watch scene. It should have been given to his parents. He was not in a relationship with her. He was in a relationship at the time of his death. Seeing as she died too the watch belonged to his parents. Jewel remarks that she feels like his widow? I know how Herzog is. Plenty of people have commented on what kind of person he is. If Herzog did exploit his death then the ex-girlfriend was fine with it.

Just for the record, I'm not a Dude, I'm a Dudette!

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I hated about every scene with her in them. She seemed so fake every time. She would sniffle, or making crying noises but it would take her a minute to actually get tears in her eyes. After he listened to the tape I thought she was laughing, but I guess some people do just cry oddly.
She didn't deserve the watch, and she shouldn't have said she felt like his "widow". What kind of question is that anyway, I feel like she as the 1 who wrote the question for herself...

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I think the director was doing his due diligence in trying to listen to the audio. She was the keeper of the audio, and for all we know she didn't want a film crew taking it off into another room. By being there, she ensured that only the director was hearing the audio and no one was bootlegging it.

You paint it as exploitation, but it was her decision to let him listen, and from what we see of her interaction with the director throughout the film she more than anyone seemed to appreciate his presence. I don't know why you'd get so emotionally worked up over imaginary crimes because you saw a close up.

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This scene bothered me also. I thought it was arrogant for Herzog to advise Jewel to destroy the recording after he had finished with it.

It like he's saying, "Well now that my own curiosity has been sated, it might as well be destroyed."

I liked the film a lot despite one or two other moments that seemed manipulative on Herzog's part.

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I agree - that point in an otherwise outstanding documentary always gets to me....
it seemed very selfish and wrong

Do the *beep* snow angel, dude. Do the *beep* snow angel!!

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You are not a perceptive person.

He advised her to destroy it because he knew she might give in to curiosity and eventually listen to it - which would have a shocking effect on her.

Herzog was trying to protect her from herself.

Yet an unsimpathetic person like you calls that 'arrogance'. Oy.

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Agreed. And I would add another point: it would make people feel more angry toward bears, which he would had hate.

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This scene bothered me also. I thought it was arrogant for Herzog to advise Jewel to destroy the recording after he had finished with it.

It like he's saying, "Well now that my own curiosity has been sated, it might as well be destroyed."

Werner Herzog actually admitted he made a mistake:
"And I take the earphones off and I tell her, 'You should destroy it.' (...) I was so shocked that I said something very very stupid."
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cV5_nDqeRL8 (around 39 minutes in)

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When I first saw “Grizzly Man” I was absolutely sure that those conversations he had with Treadwell’s friends, including the one you mention, were genuine. I was amazed at the squirrel story (or was that from "Into the Abyss"?), and at the scene with Herzog listening to the tape I wept. His self-control, his distant, objective approach to the subject, as well as the uncompromising manner in which he – unlike Treadwell – kept himself always behind the camera and away from the setting dazzled me. I loved his impersonal poetry, so to speak – and I was tricked into believing that it had to do with a free, kind of dadaist method of filmmaking: let everything flow before your eyes, do away with the unnecessary, keep only the essential.

Then I realized those conversations could not have possibly taken place, that people don’t make such elaborate sentences when interviewed and that they don’t reflect like that on their actions or their feelings. I later on heard Herzog himself admitting that he usually directs this sort of things and I was disappointed: I somehow still thought that art was not a trick. Nevertheless it is a trick, and the difference between Herzog and Treadwell consists in this knowledge as well.

Treadwell was a troubled guy who honestly believed he was a superhero and perhaps an artist. He was neither and he died – and he was the sole cause of his death. I think it happened to him not because he wasn’t educated enough, but because he wasn’t disciplined enough – and capable to get rid of his own self from time to time. Had he attempted to make a documentary about bears, he would have done a great job; but his obsession didn’t allow him, and he ended up making a film about himself. He was all over it and he ruined it. In his search for a collected, portrait-like face he crossed some lines: he wanted to direct, live and watch his story, all at the same time, and he started working with reality instead of fiction. He was a tyrant in his own way, in that he attempted to impose the rules of fiction – his own rules – to a real world. For some reason he wanted to fight the world, and win against it. His film ended – accidentally – with his death.

But Herzog is far worse. He doesn’t cross the lines Treadwell crosses – instead he systematically ignores others, humanly speaking much more dangerous to overlook. The ruthless way in which he trashes Treadwell is heartbreaking – and the fact that he refused to include the audio with Treadwell’s death in the final footage seems but a clever disguise for what otherwise would look like grave robbery. Having Treadwell’s madness exposed for everybody to gaze at – and inevitably to judge –, decomposed and recomposed like that to illustrate a meaningful idea, goes into a realm where mass-media indiscretions appear childish and pardonable. It is, indeed, something meaningful in what Herzog shows, but the more I think about it, the more treacherous and devious and cold-blooded the man appears to me. It feels like treason somehow – worse than murder. And not only didn’t he bother to change the names, but he didn’t change them deliberately – to then employ this as to make everything look like a regular documentary.

And yet this film is a very powerful representation of Treadwell’s particular kind of madness, which is also Herzog’s madness – and I believe it contains in it some of the spirit of our time. I’ve seen the same madness represented in Boe’s “Off-screen”, in Forman’s “Man On The Moon”, in Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York”; I think I can recognize it in poems like Ernst Jandl’s, and then I think I can track it back to Eliot, Joyce and Beckett. It has to do with the way in which man nowadays lives – in a sort of panic, as if overwhelmed by an unbearable notion of himself. The mirror is his abyss and he believes he has the duty to acknowledge everything that he sees in there – to stare at every platitude and every horror. “I am...”: in order to provide the ultimate definition, Treadwell becomes his own character and gives in to a God-like circularity. This is what Herzog shows – a blasphemy, from a certain point of view; a tragedy, as defined by Aristotle – and so he can get away with his sacrilege, and still appear as an old, wise man. The conversations with people are not real, but they do tell the truth, as he himself says; his documentaries are thus self-consistent, even if, in order to achieve this consistency, they are to rely on artifice and fabrication. And he did modify reality to suit his purposes, just as Treadwell did, but he kept within a framework – that of fiction – the latter passed over during shooting his film.

“I am the centre”, says Herzog in an interview with Q TV. Indeed he is in a way, as he is not merely a filmmaker, but a Glasperlenspieler. Sometimes he cannot explain what he is doing, but then I doubt he really wants to. He knows he possesses a sort of syntactic competence – this ability to create powerful, universally meaningful sequences of images – and he coldly exploits that as best as he can. Unlike Treadwell, he doesn’t dream to lose himself into the mirror – he wants to make monstrous films about it. It is impossible not to admire this.

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But Herzog is far worse. He doesn’t cross the lines Treadwell crosses – instead he systematically ignores others, humanly speaking much more dangerous to overlook. The ruthless way in which he trashes Treadwell is heartbreaking – and the fact that he refused to include the audio with Treadwell’s death in the final footage seems but a clever disguise for what otherwise would look like grave robbery. Having Treadwell’s madness exposed for everybody to gaze at – and inevitably to judge –, decomposed and recomposed like that to illustrate a meaningful idea, goes into a realm where mass-media indiscretions appear childish and pardonable. It is, indeed, something meaningful in what Herzog shows, but the more I think about it, the more treacherous and devious and cold-blooded the man appears to me. It feels like treason somehow – worse than murder. And not only didn’t he bother to change the names, but he didn’t change them deliberately – to then employ this as to make everything look like a regular documentary.

Uhm, what? You level some pretty heavy accusations at Herzog's door, not least that his behaviour was "worse than murder", only to then fail to account for them in any measure. Don't let the evidence get in the way of some sensationalistic quips, eh? And you accuse Herzog of treachery...

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[deleted]

The thing about Kinski was, he mixed horrible truths and blatant lies pretty much seamlessly, so no one really payed attention when he "confessed" to anything, because it meant nothing. He was a notorious bullsh*tter, and would lie about absolutely anything. Most people lie to gain something, but some people just lie, no matter if it makes them look good or bad. Kinski didn't care.

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It was an artistic choice. Herzog wanted to express the brutality of Treadwell and Huguenard's demise. I think that seeing him listen to the tape did add to the film. There was no easy way around it though, it's just a matter of taste as to how much is too much.

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Hi, I think you misunderstand me. I myself came to think eventually that it was, as you said, an artistic choice. I admit though I wasn't very clear in that post – plus English is not my first language.

I wrote the post in reply to some other posts, where people were questionning Herzog’s approach to the matter. Somebody said, for example: ” I did however feel that the scene where Werner Herzog listened to the audio in front of Jewel Pavolak came across as being in extremely poor taste. It seemed to me an unnecessarily exploitative action... ”
I myself felt the same thing, and, as I also knew the documentary was not genuine, I was enraged at what seemed to be ruthless exploitation. Not only that particular scene bothered me, but the documentary itself – that is, the idea to present as a documentary something which was in fact deeply controlled and directed. I said to myself: “Ok, so Herzog used the story of a troubled man only to make a film – and the film is not even what it seems to be. It is not worth it. It is a scandal.”
But then I realized I was wrong - and I suggested it in the same post. I should have said it, plain and simple. Herzog saw in Treadwell’s story the “Idea” behind the story of any hero, from say Gilgamesh to Fitzcarraldo, and presented it as best as he could. Masterfully, in my opinion. When Gilgamesh decided to conquer immortality, he wanted to be something else than he was; he wanted to go beyond his human limits, to transgress them. Treadwell did the same thing, and Herzog made a film about this heroic, transgressive attempt and its consequences. In my post, I also tried to show how the modern hero looks like - and where (in literature or film) some of his portraits can be found. From this perspective, my moral indignation seemed (and was) ridiculous. I deliberately magnified and hyperbolized it in the first part of my post – to make fun of it. It seems that I actually missed my point.

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I would also like to add - to better explain my view of the whole thing - that I believe art itself is sometimes transgressive. In fact not art itself, but the artist. When I mentioned grave-digging, I was also thinking of those Renaissance painters who robbed graves to better study anatomy. One of them said something like: "Yes, we went that far." One cannot judge this as a moral choice - because it does not involve morality in the first place. But still, if one sees it as a moral choice - a choice that takes place within morality - it is a scandal.

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Treadwell HIMSELF said to keep the camera running if he was attacked and killed by a bear! Herzog should ' ve honored Treadwell ' s wishes by playing the tape! It could've also served as a warning to others to not be so foolish!

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