Beautiful End of the World a Human Mystery

There might not be a more beautifully shot movie this year than director Werner Herzog’s latest natural world documentary Encounters at the End of the World. While the movie may not have the long lasting resonance of Grizzly Man or the highflying elegance of The White Diamond, this is still a fascinatingly mystifying journey into the unknown impossible to take your eyes off of.

A diver underneath the ice in ThinkFilms' Encounters at the End of the World

Thanks to some fantastic underwater imagery sent to him by a personal friend, Herzog’s latest adventure has him traveling to Antarctica, arriving at McMurdo Station (headquarters of the National Science Foundation and home to eleven hundred people during the austral summer running from October to February) only to discover what is essentially a sprawling mining-like community populated by adventures, intellectuals and eccentric personalities from all over the four corners of the globe.

From that starting point, he then heads out to different enclaves lying upon the continent. He goes and studies giant seals, heads under the water to examine the magnificent polar ice sculptures luring beneath the deep, goes to the top of Mt. Erebus and looks down into the heart of an active volcano and – even though he claims to do otherwise – goes and visits a group of scientists studying penguins.

But like all of Herzog’s walks with nature, this one is just as much about human nature as it is about Mother Nature. The team of researchers obsessed with one-cell living organisms who like to hold impromptu rock concerts on the icy edge of at Antarctic Sea, an eccentric Native American business professional positive he has Mayan lineage working at McMurdo as a plumber, a literary professor tending the botanical gardens at the station and talking about dead writers as if they were still alive.

These people have all escaped from the everyday world and come to a place of primal beauty and even fewer rules. It is the last untamed wilderness left on the planet, the filmmaker curious as to what the effect of its potential taming will have on the rest of planet. It is a fascinating journey of primarily human dimensions, and as grand as the creatures are that we encounter or the beauteously mysterious places the man’s camera descends it is the people and their bizarrely fascinating stories that keep us wanting for more.

Still, I can’t rightly say this is the most consistently engaging of the filmmaker’s nonfiction forays. Herzog, never the subtle egotists, like Michael Moore loves to put himself front and center inside his pictures and this one is no exception. I really could have done with less of him, would have been happy without his constant philosophical musings, at times wishing he’d just leave well enough alone and let all this natural wonder go ahead and speak for itself.

Thankfully this is a relatively minor problem because, even with all the incessant jibber-jabber on the director’s part, most time Nature doesn’t have any problems whatsoever speaking right over the top of him. Cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger (Rescue Dawn) offers up Antarctic scenes like nothing we’ve ever seen before. A lake of liquid magma bubbling just beneath a gigantic tower of ice, a lonely penguin trekking off into the unknown center of the continent heading for certain death, mysterious five-legged underwater creatures inching their way through across a frigidly cold ocean bed, this and more brought to fascinatingly enthralling life by the expert cameraman. 

All of which ends up making Encounters at the End of the World a piece of journalistic exploration I couldn’t help but adore. Herzog, for the most part, does it again, and the only thing cold about his newest documentary are the shivers of appreciation I felt realizing what it must be like for the fearless men and women who, for five months out of the year, call the most inhospitable place on planet their home.

Film Rating: êêê  (out of 4)

Additional Links:

-  2008 SIFF Blog by Sara Michelle Fetters
-  2008 Seattle International Film Festival Home Page
-  Encounters at the End of the World Theatrical Trailer