Staged reality in Grizzly Man

Grizzly Man presents a very complicated view of reality.  Unlike many of the films we've watched, Mulvey's first two looks are not subordinated to the third--in this film, we are incredibly aware of the camera.  In fact, the camera is almost a character in the film--Tim talks to it, many times as if he were talking to a therapist almost, describing his innermost worries and fears, and at other times we see him wielding a separate camera than the one that is filming him.  This in addition to the fact that his work is documentary, and not fiction, would suggest that the film presents a more authentic reality than most films do.  

However, this idea is very strongly undermined in many ways by the movie.  For example, in many of the shots, we not only see the part Tim intended to film, but also the parts that would almost definitely be cut were he to have edited them--e.g., him setting up the camera, him offering commentary on his own remarks, him saying things after he's done shooting a scene, etc.  These scenes reveal the fact that the "reality" he sought to present with the camera is not an unfiltered one, but rather a highly thought out one that he himself created. Even though he is shooting scenes of nature, and of reality, at the end of the day he will still choose specific scenes and cut others.  Thus, the view he gives is not that of reality, but reality filtered through him, and through what he believes to be significant and important.  

In addition to his portrayal of reality, Tim's portrayal of himself in his videos is also extremely important.  He very much created a persona for himself, many aspects of which were completely false--e.g., his accent, his loner status (as Amy was there, a fact he hid in almost all of his footage).

In addition, just as Treadwell's hand is clearly shown in his portrayal of reality, so too is Herzog's touch very clearly shown in this film.  In multitude ways he appears in the movie, both with his extensive voice overs, and even appearing in the scene himself when talking to Treadwell's ex and listening to the tape of his and Amy's deaths.  His voice overs are also rather heavy handed at times, such as when he said that he did not see nature as being harmonious and gentle, but rather being full of chaos and violence and murder.  In these cases, Herzog is very clearly projecting his own interpretation onto the images he is presenting.

The troubled state of reality in this fill is even further complicated by the fact that in many of his documentaries, Werner Herzog actually introduces fictional aspects.  For example, in his ducomentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly (which I have not actually seen, but I did see Rescue Dawn, Herzog's fictional account of the same story), at one point Dieter tells the story of a dream involving flight that he had had.  However, he never had that dream, and it was Herzog who wrote that part and told him to read it.  Herzog felt that the dream perfectly represented the "truth" of the situation, and accurately revealed a part of Dieter, so it did not matter to him that it had actually not occured.  Thus, the actual reality of the situation is abandoned in favor of a fabricated hyper-reality of sorts.  Now, I don't know if Herzog had any such scripted moments in Grizzly Man for sure, but there are several scenes that I highly suspect might be. For example, when Treadwell's ex received the watch of his from the coroner (or whatever he was).  Why would she not have gotten the watch back before?  How did Herzog happen to be present when she got it back?  Obviously, these questions do have plausible answers, and it's very possible this scene was genuine--but, it's also fairly likely that it is not.  Another such scene was at the end, when the camera watched the airplane pilot as he flew off.  He was singing, mirroring the song that played in the background throughout the last sequence.  The fact that this singing matched the song (which provided an extremely apt soundtrack for the last scene) seems a highly fortunate coincidence--in addition to the fact that he ended his singing with "and Treadwell is gone."  There is something about that scene that struck me as being too perfect, too fitting of an end--and, with Herzog, even when he is shooting a documentary, if something seems too perfect, too real and true, there is a fair probability that it is (i.e., that he made it up).