Timothy Treadwell dedicated his life to the preservation of bears. Particularly the Grizzly Bear, founding the nonprofit organization Grizzly People and writing a book with good friend Jewel Palovak entitled Grizzly People expressly about the subject of the animal’s survival. He also chose to live with the bears, spending thirteen consecutive summers camping in Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Reserve to study and protect them. Treadwell would have probably kept on doing this forever, but in October of 2003 one of Timothy’s prized Grizzlies had other ideas, choosing instead to use the environmentalist as a mid-afternoon snack.

So was Treadwell a fearless do-gooder with the Grizzly’s best interests at heart? Or, was he a crazed lunatic who put his own life and the lives he brought with him in danger finally resulting in, not only his own death and the death of girlfriend Anie Huguenard, but also the killing of one of the bears he swore everything he had to protect? It’s hard to say, but by using the videotapes of the last six years of Timothy’s expeditions and by interviewing many who knew him master filmmaker Werner Herzog (“Fitzcarraldo”) attempts to find out. The result is “Grizzly Man,” a fascinating documentary examining both the man and reckless genius that compelled him to live within the confines of the dangerously seductive Alaskan wilderness.

The glory of “Grizzly Man” is Herzog’s brutal honesty in probing the naturalist’s legacy and yet still crafting a document that allows the viewer to make up their own mind as to what it all means. Wile the director isn’t afraid to add his own input, insights or opinions he never preaches them out like they’re gospel. It is a deft, evenhanded film reveling in the picturesque majesty of the images Treadwell managed to capture before his death, and even if his focus was more than a bit misguided the footage he brought back with him still can’t help but inspire.

It is, in fact, these five years of footage that makes the picture magnificent. Treadwell captures Grizzly Bears like no other on Earth ever has before, scenes of the creatures hunting, playing, fighting and just going about the daily drudgery of living life caught just mere feet away from the intrepid cameraman. There is stuff here guaranteed to blow a viewer’s mind, stuff so extraordinarily beautiful it’s enough to stop the heart and still the breath.

But even more remarkable is the footage of Treadwell himself. Turning the camera his way time and time again, these images of the bear enthusiast are astounding. Through them we see firsthand his almost religious love for the animals; his passion for giving every ounce of himself to make sure they survive. Yet, we also see Timothy’s complicated human side, the man’s vanity, pride, rage, paranoia and profound loneliness coming out again and again as Treadwell re-shoots himself over and over again like Cecile B. DeMille until he gets the moment absolutely perfect.

Of course, with so many people talking in differing perspectives about the guy it isn’t exactly to know anymore about Treadwell by the end then we did at the beginning. A liar about so many things in his life; he claimed to be from Australia – he was really raised in middle class New York, he says the bears are hunted by poachers within the nature preserve – the only bear to die by human hands in the reserve the one that ate him and his girlfriend; Timothy is still an astonishingly charismatic enigma. He was a drug addict, a struggling actor, a sometimes school teacher and an impassioned champion for the environment. He was larger than life and tiny as a flea, all-the-while the person he really was inside a mystery virtually no one took the time to find the key to unlock.

Herzog does a masterful job of stringing it all together. Pouring through hundreds of hours of videotape he skims things down to a brisk 100 minutes or so of footage, letting many of Treadwell’s more magnificent visuals tell the story for him. My favorite bits include a family of foxes who befriends the Wildman, becoming sort of a surrogate Greek Chorus for Timothy to belt out his frustrations, discuss the state of humankind and express all his love and devotion of nature’s majesty to. There’s also a great scene of Treadwell begging for rain, shouting at God, Allah, Jesus, and “the Hindu floaty thing” to bring on some much-needed storm showers.

In the end, though, the most fascinating footage may just be what Herzog doesn’t show. Treadwell recorded – obviously quite by accident – his own death, the lens cap on but the audio recording every single one of his last gasps, shrieks, screams and yells as he tried in vane to scare the hungry Grizzly away and save the girl he professed to love. We hear none of this, however, Herzog instead choosing to focus only upon himself and his reactions to the recording upon hearing it for the first and (supposedly) only time.

Whether or not this footage should have been included in the picture for the audience to hear can be debated (personally, I have no wish to hear and of it) but the power of watching the director squirm in his chair and seeing his facial contractions as he reacts to it is not. The moment is devastating, Herzog handing back the video camera to a thoroughly shaken Palovak and imploring her to never, ever listen to the horrors contained within the recording.

Hero or idiot, Treadwell’s love for the bears is solidly irrefutable. By fearlessly examining the man, warts and inconsistencies and errors all, Herzog has fashioned a nature documentary unlike any I’ve ever seen. It’s not perfect, but neither was the man it chronicles, and “Grizzly Man” is still the type of human adventure that makes going into the cinematic wilderness more than a bit worthwhile.

Film Rating: êêê1/2  (out of 4)