The point of children

If that doesn't describe my current opinion of the weather, nothing does.

I met Werner Herzog last night, which should have been one of those amazing experiences, yet had a somewhat deflating quality. I've been a fan of his work since I was hauled over to the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, MA in the 1980s by a film student a few years older than me, and made to watch his films. (We also had to watch Fassbinder, which I enjoyed far less.) Anyway, we saw "Fitzcarraldo" and "Woyczek" back to back, and later on I saw "Aguirre: Wrath of God" and started reading up on Herzog's prickly (to put it lightly) relationship with his constant actor, Klaus Kinski (who was really, really, nuts and simulatneously deeply sexy in a crazy way).



Herzog isn't far off from that, but he's more self-contained so it doesn't show as much. (He once ate his shoe, on camera, as the result of losing a bet with Errol Morris.)

In any case, I try to foist Herzog films on everyone I can get my hands on, so meeting him prior to a special screening of his new documentary, "Grizzly Man," was to have been a real treat. There was a cocktail hour prior to the screening (held without a drip of irony, considering the film's subject) in the American Museum of Natural History's large mammal exhibit hall. Herzog, as was his prerogative, appeared mere minutes before the screening was to start -- and then seemed ticked that there were interviewers who wanted to talk to him. The NY Times and Variety got in their licks before I did, and he fairly flew away from the Variety reporter, around the corner. I nodded at the publicist, who wasn't paying attention: "He's absconded." "Where??" "Around the corner." She found him at the drinks table getting some water and then decided that that was the right time for us to be introduced. He sort of ignored me as he gathered up a few veggies and with some deep embarrassment I tried to introduce myself and ask a few interesting questions, but got almost nowhere. He did respond, but eye contact was fleeting, and I felt like a jerk for intruding. Then again, it's the job, so that's how these things go. I always like to think I'm going to have the one question that makes them stop and think, "What an insightful young woman!" and want to talk to me for hours, but it doesn't work that way.

The movie was fantastic. The story behind the movie is fantastic: This guy Timothy "Timmy" Treadwell -- who probably went around as not fully-diagnosed manic depressive; to watch him is astounding -- went to live in the wildnerness of Alaska to watch and "protect" the bears there. An admirable, if reckless thing -- he was unarmed always -- but as the movie unfolds his motives for doing so seem to take on an almost narcissistic quality. Anyway, he went there for 13 summer seasons; the last five he took a video camera and, sometimes, a girlfriend. At the end of the final season, he and the girlfriend were attacked and ... eaten. It's not gory, though apparently an audio recording of the event exists. Herzog listens to it on the camera but insists it isn't something anyone should listen to. Instead the coroner describes much of what's on the tape, and frankly, that's plenty. So what we're left with is some of Herzog going back to the scene of things (oh, my lord the mosquitos swarm around his interview subjects in that wild so loudly and plentifully you can hear them on the microphone) and a lot of Treadwell's filming. He (Treadwell) can be awfully twee, singing and talking to the bears like they're out of Disney, and he can be awfully frightening (going off on camera in a rant at the Park Service), but he's definitely unique.

Herzog, on the other hand, tries to make the case that the biggest mistake Treadwell made was to believe that if he was warm and friendly to these carnivores, they would return the favor. He makes a good point. But then he makes statements that can make no sense. Apparently the girlfriend who died wtih Treadwell was not just fearful of bears, but really, really wanted to get out of there. Herzog comments, "Inexplicably, she stayed with Treadwell." Inexplicably? It's not like she could walk out and catch a cab. Maybe they had radios for emergency purposes, but that's never mentioned.

After the film, Herzog was part of a panel that included a woman who had been Treadwell's girlfriend and ran his organization with him, a bear expert who had once been mauled and lost his eye by a bear, and the host of Studio 360, Kurt Andersen, who moderated the whole thing. The bear expert liked to point out that Treadwell would have done the bears more protecting if he'd stayed out of their way and maybe observed from a tree. Herzog said he felt some of the "save the" feeling we all have for whales and bears and spotted owls should be applied to indigenous peoples who are in such shrinking communities that their cultures and languages die off when they die. (This coming from a man who filmed "Fitzcarraldo" in the Amazon jungle and, like his primary subject, had no problem using local labor -- some of whom were injured trying to get that steamboat over the mountain.)

I headed out once the panel devolved into audience questions, but as I left I heard one guy stand up and ask: "What was the point of this film?"

Herzog shot back, "That's like asking, 'What is the point of children?'"