Nature & Animals
Real world
Real-world influenceHIGH
- Grizzly Bears
- Wilderness Survival
- Alaska
The film is made out of Timothy Treadwell's own footage, roughly a hundred hours shot over thirteen summers living among grizzlies in Katmai, and it exists because the bears killed him and his partner in 2003. Herzog's argument with his subject is the film. Treadwell filmed the bears as individuals with names and treated the wilderness as harmony; Herzog says in voiceover that he sees only indifference and the overwhelming hostility of nature, and the two readings run against each other over the same images. The animals are not the setting here. The disagreement about what a bear is is the entire subject.