Grizzly Man - Lacan Lack

Lacan Applied to Grizzly Man

In 2005 Dir. Werner Herzog made Grizzly Man a documentary film about Timothy Treadwell a man who was mentally unstable who sought peace by living around bears for a long period of months each year for thirteen years before his death in 2003. The film makes use of actual footage taken by Treadwell over his last few summers and interviews and opinions of not only the director him self but also those who were around him in life. This film can have the theory of Lack by Lacan which explores the way in which peoples minds are always incomplete with a piece missing and the drive we experience is the want to fill that hole in us.

As a documentary there wasn't much in the way of scenes but there were a few topics in which Lacan's theory of lack can be applied to Treadwell's story and how it was portrayed in the documentary. How he came involved with bears is one of the things to look at as there is a thing said by him that says before he met the bears he was an alcoholic. This happens in the film at a point where Werner points out that Treadwell started revealing more about himself in his footage. To apply this to Lacan we can say that to be drinking he was trying to fill the empty piece of his mind with alcohol. We then can infer that by becoming attached to the bears that his hole was not filled right or had changed. Unlike most people though his pursuit of the bear's life, safety and then lifestyle was furthered by having larger holes than most.

We can look into it more again when you hear his journey portrayed through the films documentary how he went from trying to help people understand the bears as his thankfulness to the bear race for giving him purpose. You could also say that it filled the hole that he wanted forgiveness from the human race as he was an alcoholic with no purpose but now he had one he was the human bear ambassador with decent amount of charisma by setting up a bear campaigning group. Technically edited at each of these points we are given cut aways to Werner and others to fill in our gap of information, we want to know why Treadwell did this. As the film goes on we as the audience can start to infer using the Lacan's Lack theory that he did this as his lack changed to wanting to be a bear rather than humanity thinking being abandoned and frustrated by humans that his salvation would be his destiny.

The film Grizzly Man has an exploration of a man who was lacking in something in his personality and thanks to the editing of his tale we get to experience it and with knowledge of Lack we get a more in-depth perspective too.