A film, Grizzly Man about a man who spends every summer for 13 years with grizzly bears in a remote part of Alaska holds us transfixed. He sets up a camera and films the bears from close up, despite the danger. So there are no actors unless you count him. In the end he and his girl friend are killed and eaten by a bear (not filmed). A hundred hours of film are edited and augmented with interviews, by the director, Werner Herzog. The result is a study of a man, more than a little barmy, who is obsessed with these giant, savage animals, as much as it is a record of the bears.
I go out of the front door to look for something beautiful to mention here, and there by the front door are the first yellow flowers of creeping jenny, the ground-cover plant, which brings colour to a shady bed at this time of year. It has pretty pointed petals.
This afternoon, a warm wind is blowing, swinging the branches of trees, and bending shrubs to its will - a benign summer wind.
2 comments:
I like Werner Herzog's films. He seems to thrive on portraying people who are obsessed by some great and perhaps crackpot idea. Didn't he do the film about the lover of Wagnerian opera who attempted to sail a boat through the South American jungle and cross the Andes?
Yes. Fitzcaraldo.
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