Within five minutes, the viewer begins to realize that this guy is merely a selfish, effeminate head case working through his own identity crisis and not in the least concerned with the plight of the powerful, savage animals he professes to love. In truest buffoon fashion, he spends long periods ranting in front of a fixed camera, informing the world that he's "the only person on earth who can live among these bears" and that "anyone else would be killed ...anyone! Nobody else knows how to live among these animals like me ... no one!" ... Of course, like all those sadly lacking the credentials to mock and tempt the great God, Fate, he gets ripped to shreds and devoured soon thereafter. The colossal pity is that the bear who eats him is later pointlessly killed by rangers for performing a purely natural act on his own remote turf. Even more shameful is the fact that this asshole actually had an audio recording device running as the grizzly slowly disassembled him, but the documentary's director wouldn't share his final agonized screams with the audience. My documentary would have been a tad different...it would have been entitled "Shrieks of the Disemboweled ".
Oh, don't get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed it, too...especially the inevitable conclusion which represents one of the few times I've seen true cosmic justice in action. ....My complaint is that Herzog, who assembled the footage, didn't let us hear the effeminate asshole's ribs being snapped and extracted like popsicle sticks and his numb skull getting crushed like a walnut in the bear's mighty jaws. The most ironic element is that the girl he coaxed into staying out there in the wild with him had reservations about it all the way down the line and was due to leave just after the bear made her pay the high price of keeping bad company.
