(Example: That coroner in Grizzly Man always felt like a B-movie mad scientist character to me. I am in a way happy to have been lied to, though it has left me suspicious of Herzog’s other works. It’s also a low-stakes fictional outburst that momentarily made me believe in a more interesting world than this one.
It’s a clear violation of what documentaries are supposed to do. I was disappointed, only briefly, to learn that Herzog had made up the crocodile part, chalking it up to his pursuit of some “ecstatic truth” rather than the dull and artless “accountant’s truth” of the real world. Have you seen Werner Herzog’s 2010 documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams? It’s like 95% about a treasure trove of prehistoric art discovered in France but ends with a strange detour about albino crocodiles who’ve been mutated by a nearby nuclear power plant. But some other part of my brain - the part that reads books, watches movies, and hopes to see a convincing Bigfoot photo one day - can appreciate the blurry border between what is and what could be. As a journalist I prefer a crisp dividing line between fact and fiction.
