Alright, two documentaries I saw at the Waterfront Film Festival blew my pants off for two totally different reasons. Shakespeare Behind Bars (dir. Hank Rogerson) and Grizzly Man
(dir. Werner Herzog) both crack open the hardened shell of an audience
and make us look at the true human soul inside characters who otherwise
could be immediately dismissed with preconceived ideas. I really can't say enough about these films. There is nobody I wouldn't recommend them to. So I have to limit the focus here to what was most important to me about the films and why I walked out of both of them knowing that my life is better for watching them.

Both seem to have titles that almost taunt the audience to walk into the theater with a preconceived idea so the directors can demolish it. One because it evokes two things: Shakespeare and prison, two terribly unmarketable icons for the multiplex theaters. The other because it sounds like a Pulp Magazine monster, "Grizzly Man." However, Shakespeare Behind Bars transcends any rudimentary 1:1 story about Shakespeare or prison, and Grizzly Man by the end is almost Herzog's tongue-in-cheek joke of a title he gives to his film. Knowing how intimate you, the audience, will be with the depths of this Grizzly Man's soul there really is no title to capture who he was. So why not Grizzly Man?
Curt Tofteland has been volunteering on a weekly basis with prisoners in Kentucky for ten years now to direct the Shakespeare Behind Bars program: 30 inmates who rehearse nine months to perform one show. Through a friend I was given the opportunity to have breakfast with Curt Tofteland and Hank Rogerson, director of the documentary. As I tried to hang words on what the documentary meant to me, Curt just nodded with a knowing smile. He told me that Shakespeare isn't just a literary icon, but the writer who captured raw humanity better than anyone ever has. Which is why he brought Shakespeare to the prisoners.
24 hours a day, 7 days a week, year after year these inmates wear a hardened mask, a false-self who feels no pain. It's survival of the fittest and softness is not rewarded in prison. But for the 30 inmates involved with the Shakespeare productions, honesty is a mandate. They are cast by their peers in roles that fit their background and their crime. In their rehearsals they push each other to go deep, to find honesty, to not act but really wear their character, which for a lot of them means wearing their own skin for the first time. From the screen, their souls became palpable during their rehearsals as I watched them discover for the first time the true man behind the label "prisoner," "deviant," "convict."
There is no way to passively watch Shakespeare Behind Bars because as these men discover their own authentic humanity, it becomes obvious that those whom society might label "monsters" are truly human and humans desperate for forgiveness. As one inmate says, "I want the chance to do something to redeem myself so that when I leave this earth I won't only be remembered by the worst thing I've ever done." It's easy to say somebody is a criminal and needs to be withdrawn from society and revoked of their freedoms that they took for granted. However, after watching this film it raises something far more difficult to determine, which is the question of when has justice been served and when is it time to forgive a man who has truly changed? Shouldn't we all have the chance to change? What if you change and yet society won't remove that label of "monster" so they can see you for who you have become while behind bars?
Werner Herzog delves deep into the man Timothy Treadwell (the Grizzly Man), a self-proclaimed protector of wildlife who for 13 summers went into the Alaskan wild and lived with the Grizzlies only to be brutally killed by one. Most of the footage used in this documentary is taken from the camera of Treadwell himself who was single handedly shooting hundreds of hours of video thinking it would someday be cut into a television program like The Crocodile Hunter. Treadwell is a laughable character. With the first shot Herzog lets us know that his subject is no wildlife expert and, if anything, he's a little crazy. His childishness is even creepy in a way that I can only liken to Michael Jackson. Treadwell goes into the wild and talks to these 800 pound Grizzlies who could rip his arm off in a moment as if he's running a Day Care. In some ways, for Treadwell, he really is. That opening scene evoked some giggles from me and most of the audience, but, as a documentarian shouldering his responsibility like a champion, that was the last time Herzog let us laugh at his subject.
Timothy Treadwell was by no means looked at as a passive camper. He saw himself as a hero protecting the wild animals from civilization. In a lot of ways his courage to not conform to the pressures of society made him a hero. Many of the locals in Alaska felt he was violating a sacred code. It is an unspoken rule that the wild Grizzlies should never become accustomed to man. But the bear kills and eats Treadwell. Was one man really taming the wild Grizzlies to civilization, or was nature passively waiting like slow moving predator to put the final period on civilization's hubris? When man goes into the wild, sooner or later, man will come face to face with his own insignificance. It's a little fatalistic, but true. So Herzog's Timothy Treadwell makes us look at the smallness of our existence. In a sense it's freeing because one can't look at the smallness of life without asking themselves, "Alright. What the hell am I really doing with the short time I've been given?"
I believe that Herzog sets the gold standard in documentary filmmaking with Grizzly Man. Treadwell's footage is littered with some of the most sensational moments to hit the big screen and Herzog doesn't let us see any of them. Likewise, Hank Rogerson makes us understand his prisoners as human beings first. So when he reveals their heinous crimes, they somehow become even more human. For me, the word I use is human. Maybe others might say the men in these films become authentic or sympathetic. Whatever word is used, Shakespeare Behind Bars and Grizzly Man showed me what a shallow prick I am whenever I label another human being as "silly," "deviant," "monstrous," "retarded," "stupid," "unforgivable."