several consecutive viewings of Herzog's The Grizzly Man.

(Herzog is one of my favorite directors: der Bruno in Stroszek and Kaspar Hauser, the world of deaf-blind in Silence and Darkness... His love for rich worlds existing on the banks of the "mainstream"...)

in the Grizzly Man, most moving is the dialogue of two film-makers. Only one accustomed to observing the world through a lense may understand that cinematic unconscious with its empty frames coming to life in the wind; with its double, triple, multiple takes that, like some rough drafts, intended for cutting, remain on the tape; with the secret presence of another person holding the camera in her hand, presence betrayed only by a slight shift in frame, following its object...

the Grizzly Man is a palimpsest. Herzog's voice-off commentary (and a cameo appearance), his witness interviews, superposed on Timothy Treadwell's footage. Herzog's calm, wise voice palliates the shock of the original document: exorbitant hundreds of hours of film, culminating with a blank screen where only the sound records the film-maker's final moments, the horrible death that, like all horror, is consigned to the unimaginable. Herzog is unable to withstand the temptation of romanticizing his subject: the Alaskan landscape becomes the image of the hero's tormented soul... Fascinated by characters existing on the social margins, by exiles, Herzog is firmly planted on this side of that invisible boundary and, more than marking the protagonist's transgression, Herzog's commentary underscores his own fear before this impossible crossing.

and yet, despite the director's attachment, critical as it may be, to our civilization, his film is a chance to step outside it and to look at it from without. Perhaps that is another horror: like standing on the other side of the mirror only to find the contents of one's room unrecognizable. Hidden in the brush, like a wild animal stalking his prey or observing the movements of the enemy, Timothy Treadwell, and we with him, on the side of the camera lens, watch a group of men pull to the shore. To Treadwell, they are hunters, poachers. Firmly convinced of the threat, he can ignore their own photo equipment. He views them as if he were seeing humans for the first time.

humanity has turned into a wilderness that threatens on all sides, and the slightest human gesture, a common cliché of friendliness--a smiley doodled on a pebble--has become a menace.

would it be more interesting?, productive?, if Herzog reflected on this explicitly? To think that all of Herzog's protagonists, all people living on the margins, present a multiplicity of possible worlds? To think that their form of exile is a specific mal du siècle. Condemned to unexplicable alcoholism within the society, a Timothy Treadwell finds cure in a society of his own making.

there are scenes in this palimpsest that i would not have missed: the spreading of Treadwell's ashes over the Alaskan meadow... On the other hand, I enjoy Herzog's lingering camera: long after a hurried film-maker would yell "Cut!," Herzog lets the film roll, catching a gesture of someone who has just finished speaking and who perhaps waits only for the "Cut!" to walk off screen. The coroner's arm drops; Treadwell's "widow" examines the watch taken off his severed wrist. His cinematic technique is most naked here. Pure form.

where the palimpsest is most successful is in the superposition of visions. Treadwell sees a romanticized nature--parallel to Herzog's own idealization of his subject; while Herzog's clear mind sees indifference and hunger.

perhaps it is precisely that divergence of glances that makes the spectator conscious of his own palimpsestic viewing?

mental montage: what is it that one remembers of a film?