DOUBLE FEATURE 08.28.20

BY: Daniel Fisher

Toward the end of his 2005 documentary, Grizzly Man, about environmentalist and self-proclaimed bear savior Timothy Treadway, master filmmaker Werner Herzog observes in his narration: “What haunts me is that in all of the faces of all of the bears that Treadwell filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I only see the overwhelming indifference of nature.” It is a devastating, stark observation, particularly in light of the film’s events and serves as the theme of this week’s Double Feature.

It is a theme that runs through Herzog’s body of work: in the face of nature, humankind is powerless and if one challenges it, there will surely be consequences. Few films better exemplify this than Grizzly Man. Treadway believed that he had a deep connection with bears and dedicated the better part of his life to protect them from poachers. The bears Treadway chose to protect lived in a national park in Alaska. He spent thirteen summers among the grizzlies and recorded more than 100 hours of video, which Herzog threads together along with interviews. In 2003, a bear killed Treadwell and his girlfriend while the camera was running. However, only the audio was recorded. What makes the film so powerful is Herzog’s chillingly blunt, dry commentary, which serves to shape Treadwell’s story into an object lesson about the presumptuousness of those who believe they wield power over something infinitely larger than themselves.

One of the most exquisitely shot films in recent memory, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant, takes on the man versus nature story through a different lens. The film enacts the accurate account of frontiersman Hugh Glass’s harrowing sojourn through the Dakotas’ unforgiving wilderness in the early 19th century, during which he survives the unsurvivable, including a brutal bear attack, a fall from a cliff and being pulled down a violent river. Knowing that fighting back is futile, Glass submits to nature, and in doing so, he is miraculously spared. Leonardo Di Caprio delivers one of his strongest performances as Glass. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor, as does Tom Hardy in the role of the ruthless antagonist who killed Glass’s son. However, the real star of The Revenant is the stark beauty and “overwhelming indifference of nature.”