This is an endlessly fascinating documentary. Engrossingly directed (as usual) by the legendary Werner Herzog, Encounters at the End of the World is a film of stunning, haunting beauty, a picture that does something that so few films are capable of these days – it shows you something new and different. Herzog and a crew of less than five (including long time cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger) traveled to Antarctica and documented life on the South Pole. You get to swim under the frozen slabs of ice, which have been staggeringly captured by brave underwater cameramen, and what you get to see under the ice is nothing short of transfixing. Mixed with the eerie, otherworldly sounds of communicating seals, the footage provides an extraterrestrial quality; it’s like you’re looking at life on a completely different planet. You also get introduced to the many eccentric people (scientists, workers, environmentalists, cooks, etc.) that populate the South Pole. While there aren’t that many people who live there in total, each and every one of them interviewed by Herzog seems like a surreal piece of work.
Herzog, a filmmaker known for his brazen sense of humor and a subversive sense of irony, is appalled by the presence of such commercial items as an ATM machine and a gym/spa on the icy tundra. He is a filmmaker, like Terrence Malick, who has always been interested by the ways that man and nature interact and intersect. Herzog has gone to great geographic lengths throughout his career. Whether it’s the Amazon (Aguirre the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo), Laos (Little Dieter, Rescue Dawn), Alaska (Grizzly Man), Kuwait (Lessons of Darkness) or at the McMurdo Research Station in this film, he seems entranced by the many exotic qualities that different regions can provide for him as a filmmaker. There are also visual and thematic references to two earlier Herzog docs, The White Diamond and The Wild Blue Yonder. Herzog, who operated one of the two high-definition cameras on the shoot, emphasizes how desolate, alone, and brutally cold the South Pole is. He didn’t go there to make a warm and fuzzy penguin movie ala March of the Penguins (he even states so at the front end of the doc) but yes, you do get some penguin footage. You also get to hear Herzog ask a penguin specialist about the potential existence of gay penguins. Trust me, it’s priceless.
Podcasting Them Softly 