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Another documentary, My Best Fiend (sic), chronicles his working relationship with Kinski. Probably more interesting to someone who's already seen most of the movies they made together (Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo, Cobra Verde, Nosferatu the Vampyre—itself a remake of Murnau's silent film—and Woyczek).
I had mixed feelings about Grizzly Man. Tim Treadwell was, no doubt, a self-impressed jackass at best and mentally ill at worst—Herzog kinda glossed over his alcoholism, which I thought was a shame, since a lot of his later behavior is classic dry-drunk pathology—but frankly Herzog came off as pretty self-impressed himself. He uses Treadwell as a foil, letting him set up his own thoughts about nature, and then punctures them. It's an entirely one-sided debate, since Treadwell's not alive to rebut Herzog and Herzog is free to cherry-pick Treadwell's hundreds of hours of footage to find the tape that shows him in the worst light. It kinda left a bad taste in my mouth. Like, they're both jerks—they desrve each other.
Richard Thompson's score was just sublime, though, and it sounds terrific on its own. If you rent the Grizzly man DVD, be sure to watch the documentary on the recording session for the score, wherein Herzog's pomposity reaches Olympian levels. It's a hoot. |
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