Jayne ,'Ariel'
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I don't necessarily think he was self-righteous. he never expected to change anyone's minds about the way they lived their life. he just did things the way he wanted to do them.
I do agree about the heedless part though. he seemed pretty oblivious to the affect he had on others.
Yeah, the bits in the movie I found upsetting were his sisters comments.
That's why I can't watch that movie (or Grizzly Man, for that matter).
Me too. Hate that kind of selfish stupidity so much.
Boy, I loved Grizzly Man. I don't think Treadwell was selfishly stupid so much as a delusional Don Quixote tilting at imagined giants.
Never saw the movie in question, though.
I could see missing Grizzly Man because Treadwell is so annoying. But there's no implication in the movie that Treadwell is admirable. Herzog is kind of notorious for believing that nature is out to kill you, and I think you leave the film pitying Treadwell, but not feeling like you should like him.
Herzog is kind of notorious for believing that nature is out to kill you
Yeah, there are numerous sequences in the film where Treadwell is waxing lyrical about how wonderful bears are and how only he understands them and how when you look into a bear's eyes you see how kind and good and gentle they are, which Herzog intercuts with close-ups of bears looking mean and predatory while his own VO narration says something to the effect of "Bears are godless killing machines."
I don't necessarily think he was self-righteous. he never expected to change anyone's minds about the way they lived their life. he just did things the way he wanted to do them.
I do agree about the heedless part though. he seemed pretty oblivious to the affect he had on others.
Self-absorbed may be a better description, though we usually think of that in the context of someone also being shallow and vapid, which he plainly was not. I never got a clear sense of whether he was so much a free spirit that it never occurred to him that vanishing from people's lives would be hurtful, or if he understood it and just didn't care at all.
I would have like Into the Wild to touch on the fact that there was a hand-operated tram 1/4 mile away from where MacCandless tried to cross the swollen river. Or that if he had a MAP of the area, he could have walked out of there.
I think the film glosses over his heedless, reckless behavior. I don't think he was self-righteous, but he was definitely naive.
which Herzog intercuts with close-ups of bears looking mean and predatory while his own VO narration says something to the effect of "Bears are godless killing machines."
Ha! It's like the scene in the Simpsons where we see Homer's pet lobster from Homer's point of view (The Little Mermaid lobster) and Marge's (real lobster).
Haven't seen either movie yet, so I can't really comment.
S wants to see Into the Wild because she's a big Krakauer fan (she's reading Under the Banner of Heaven right now). I want to see it because I like Penn as a director.
We both want to see Grizzly Man because we're both Herzog fans.