Thus, when Dante describes the spirits falling from the bank of Acheron "as dead leaves flutter from a bough," he gives the most perfect image possible of their utter lightness, feebleness, passiveness, and scattering agony of despair, without, however, for an instant losing his own clear perception that these are souls, and those are leaves; he makes no confusion of one with the other. But when Coleridge speaks ofThe one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,he has a morbid, that is to say, a so far false, idea about the leaf: he fancies a life in it, and will, which there are not; confuses its powerlessness with choice, its fading death with merriment, and the wind that shakes it with music.
This leads Ruskin to erect a hierarchy among men who speak about the natural world under the power of emotion, starting with
the man who perceives rightly, because he does not feel, and to whom the primrose is very accurately the primrose, because he does not love it. Then, secondly, the man who perceives wrongly, because he feels, and to whom the primrose is anything else than a primrose: a star, or a sun, or a fairy's shield, or a forsaken maiden. And then, lastly, there is the man who perceives rightly in spite of his feelings, and to whom the primrose is for ever nothing else than itself--a little flower, apprehended in the very plain and leafy fact of it, whatever and how many soever the associations and passions may be, that crowd around it. And, in general, these three classes may be rated in comparative order, as the men who are not poets at all, and the poets of the second order, and the poets of the first; only however great a man may be, there are always some subjects which ought to throw him off his balance; some, by which his poor human capacity of thought should be conquered, and brought into the inaccurate and vague state of perception, so that the language of the highest inspiration becomes broken, obscure, and wild in metaphor, resembling that of the weaker man, overborne by weaker things.
This last group comprises the prophets, "who, strong as human creatures can be, are yet submitted to influences stronger than they, and see in a sort untruly, because what they see is inconceivably above them."
In Ruskin's scheme, the makers of March of the Penguins would be poets of the second order. In Werner Herzog's documentary Grizzly Man there is also a man with a videocamera filming animals--in this case grizzly bears in the Katmai National Park on the Alaska Peninsula--and projecting his feelings onto them. (Click here for a gallery of Quang-Tuan Luong's photos of bears in Katmai.) In Grizzly Man, however, the poet of the second order is not the documentarian himself but his subject: Timothy Treadwell (1957-2003), an alcoholic, failed actor, who spent 13 summers living among the grizzlies. Herzog shaped this 103-minute documentary from 100 hours of footage Treadwell shot up to October 2003 when he and his reluctant girlfriend Amie Huguenard stayed later past the season than usual and were attacked and eaten by a hungry bear looking for a feed before hibernation.
Treadwell spent most of those summers alone and while he shot a certain amount of footage of bears swimming, feeding, fighting (including the most harrowing male-male animal scuffle I've ever seen), etc., he would also set the camera up and step in front of it to "share" what he thought and felt about the animals. He rates better than a poet of the second order as a visual artist, though not because he's in perfect control of his medium. In fact, it's precisely because Treadwell wasn't a professional photographer that his footage is different from what you see in other nature films: there isn't the usual pictorial and informational remove from the raw natural world. Treadwell considered himself one with the bears, and foxes, which gives his footage a strange home-movie quality. Some of his shots do have the startlingly vivid quality of calendar photography but at other times they achieve effects he doesn't seem sophisticated enough to have planned--the impressionistic quality of watercolor. Oddly, the presence of the setting is also further enhanced by Treadwell's outright amateur moves--speaking to the camera that he himself is holding as he walks or that he has set on the ground inside his collapsed tent.
Article comments
1 - Purple Tigress
March of the Penguins as we know it here is not how it was originally made. I understand the French version of the narration had a greater tendency to anthropormorphize the actions of the penguins. The French version is what was seen at Sundance.
Whether or not this is the feeling of the cinematographers is not evident. Perhaps they only wished to make this available to a wider audience. Perhaps this was a decision of the producer. So while the original narration may have bolstered your argument, interviews about the narration (both in English and French) would have further solidified your reasoning.
Also, you should note that while Timothy Treadwell claimed to spend 13 years alone, he was not always alone. There were girlfriends besides Jewel and Amie. That was part of his myth making and Herzog also alludes to this. There are also blogs that testify to tourists who were able to meet and talk with Treadwell while he was in the bush.
One point the documentary doesn't make clear is that they cannot prove that Treadwell was attacked and eaten by the same bear or even eaten by just one bear.
2 - Alan Dale
Thanks for the comment. You're right that I have ascribed the flaws of the American version of March of the Penguins to the moviemaking "team," in which I include the director, screenwriters, and producers. I didn't have the information to ascribe it more particularly. It is also the case that the French version appears to have been worse. IMDB.com lists, for instance, French voice actors for the mother, father, and child penguins.
As for Grizzly Man, Herzog points out when Treadwell's girlfriend is holding the camera. He notes two instances of it. I assume that when he went through the footage he would have noticed the same telltale signs from earlier summers. Maybe not, though. I don't think it makes that much difference, however, if Treadwell was monologuing to someone behind the camera. The content of what he said is the same, even if the situation is somewhat different. Also, as I recall they found human remains and clothing inside the bear they killed. Yes, it can't be proven that that is the bear Treadwell had photographed, but I believe their theory about the bear being older and desperately hungry holds good as a general matter and seems likely. It may be wrong, but again it doesn't change that much. Treadwell was not "studying" the bears in any meaningful scientific way and plainly, judging from the results, was not an expert at reading bear behavior.
3 - ss
Alan:
Thanks for a great review.
'My Best Fiend', 'Aguirre: The Wrath of God', and 'Grizzly Man'
These are the only Herzog titles I've seen so far. I'm going to have to check out 'Fitzcarraldo'.
What's great about these movies, despite the plodding stories, is Herzog's valiant attempt to avoid simple themes in describing irreducibly complex situations.
His attraction to people who do simplify the world down into familiar, palatable terms, and his fascination with the ability these weavers of archetypal fairytales have to get other people to follow them, to their own mutual destruction, his ability to admit this fascination while not romanticizing these characters, makes for something unique.
You're right, he falls into the same trap himself with the nihilism, but perhaps this nihilism is what keeps him from romanticizing his charasmatic, destructive dreamers.
Without it, he might have shot 'Natural Born Killers' instead of 'Grizzly Man'.
4 - Alan Dale
Thanks for the comment. You got Herzog right--he strictly avoids the gratifying simplifications we're used to at the movies. His avoidance has its own pitfalls--cheerless rather than cheery simplifications--but even that is so rare in the movies that it can be bracing even when it's not exactly profound. It can also be lethal (Heart of Glass) but generally it's pretty stimluating. If you have a certain temperament, anyway. I've been watching one Herzog movie after another at home and my boyfriend thinks I've gone off my rocker, except to the extent he thinks I may have found the cure for insomnia.
I'm also glad you pointed out the way that certain of Herzog's mad characters get other people to follow them--the phenomenon that haunted mid-20th century Germany.
5 - ss
Not to mention the turn of the 21st century Muslim world, as well as early 21st century America.
Strange how a 'philosphical' film maker got to the heart of that one so much more cleanly than the 'political' film makers with their conspiracy theories and simple reductions of phantasmagoric situations.
6 - Alan Dale
Interesting. Yes, the direct route doesn't necessarily lead to the most satisfying results when it comes to political movies, as I think The Constant Gardener and Lord of War show.
7 - ss
I liked both those movies, but I walked away a little disappointed in in each case.
Feines death seemed to indulge the messianic urge a bit to much in CG,
and the first hour of LoW, the 'Blow' of gun running part, could have been better.
8 - Alan Dale
Stay tuned--I'm working on a review of Constant Gardener and maybe of Lord of War though I found the latter outright dull. I used to find Nicolas Cage outrageously amusing. What happened?