We watched Grizzly Man late last night and it really was one of the most compelling films (not just documentaries, but the entire gamut of films) I’ve ever seen. I’ve been known to groan loudly whenever Corey suggests another docu film (picture it’s 9:30 at night, B’s finally asleep, I’m exhausted and the highlight of my evening is eating Breyer’s mint chip ice cream—do I really want to risk sullying my first moment of relaxation by watching a documentary on growing up paraplegic?) But Grizzly Man was just so damn good. Timothy Treadwell is a very scary genius and absolutely riveting on camera. Too bad the bear ate him. And the bears themselves, their personalities, the way they moved, how different each of them behaved or looked when the camera peered into their eyes—it was mesmerizing. As for Timothy’s fox friends, to my mind they were the obvious choice in the best supporting actors category but the freakin’ Academy overlooked them. Go foxes! You rock.

So any discussion of an animal documentary naturally leads to comparisons with other animal documentaries. To wit, March of the Penguins. We watched it about a month ago and though I enjoyed it, I have to say that Grizzly Man totally trounces those tiny tuxedo boys. I missed both documentaries in their first runs and I remember the big hoopla about Penguins being this great family values movie. What? The scene I recall most vividly was the one in which a mama penguin loses her baby (it dies—it freezes) and reeling from the horror of her loss, and clearly out of her god damn mind, she physically pushes another mama out of the way and tries to steal that mama’s baby. It was brutal to watch because a part of me/you has to think, “Yeah, I might have that impulse if my baby died.” But no, I’m not going around stealing anyone else’s baby. And then, on the heels of this devastated dead-baby having mama’s sorry attempt to get another baby, a gang of vicious mama penguins swarms her and they beat her to a pulp (or until her gut-wrenching burbles and squawks stop and she slinks off camera). Is this what those wackos on the right champion as family values? I think not.

March of Penguins is good, maybe even great (although it wasn’t so great that Corey could stay awake for it) and it helps that those penguins sure are smart and cute. But pound for animal pound, Grizzly Man was the better film because though it presented very compelling characters in Timothy and his bear posse, it didn’t try to tie up what is really a bizarre tale in some pretty little Tiffany box. I’m still wondering about the girlfriend and her strange dynamic with Timothy. She must have loved him, why else would she have hung around so long in the Grizzly maze and then refused to run as the big bad bear devoured Timothy? And why was it Timothy had to go back one last time and mess with a nasty grizzly he didn’t know? And what about the maker of the documentary, Werner Herzog? He had this super sensational soundtrack (and by sensational I mean a media sensation capable of attracting hordes of money, fame, and a great billing for his movie) and yet he refused to play it. He had the actual death of Timothy and his girlfriend—the screams, the bear sounds, all of it-- and though he is shown listening to it on camera, he doesn’t play it in the film and advises a very close friend of Timothy’s not to ever listen to it and to destroy it immediately because if she keeps it, her life will be ruined, the tape always the “white elephant in the room.” But mostly, I was floored by Timothy and his last moments on camera shot a few hours before his death. Everything about that take was prescient, it was as though Timothy knew he was about to die and this was his last shot to play the star he always wanted to be. Truly eerie, it gave me chills. Highly recommended.

I'm curious as to what other people might have thought about the two films so please chime in if you've got something interesting to share.