Encounters at the End of the World

Rating: ****

Well, if I didn’t get sick of Antarctica after Hot Docs this year, I guess I was never going to be. Good thing too, because Werner Herzog’s latest masterpiece is a brilliantly quirky and slightly philosophical look at the scientists and the science happening at the bottom of the world. Herzog finds some amazing visuals in the deceptively desolate landscape and beyond that finds incredible humanity as well in the merry band that make up the residents and inhabitants of Antarctica’s McMurdo Station. The result is a thoughtful, awe-inspiring look at the South Pole for all that live there, while not just being another “penguin movie.”

Herzog and cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger went to Antarctica as part of the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, which helps writers and artists who wish to work on the continent in order to expand the its understanding by the public. Working just seven weeks in total in order to conceive the film with only two of those reserved to shoot it, Herzog openly admits at the beginning of the film that he wasn’t sure what he was going to get out of the trip. Though eager to explore some highly existential topics on his mind, Herzog is clear on what he’s not going to Antarctica to do, and that includes spending all of his time in McMurdo.

It begins with survival training; anyone that wants off the base to explore the continent has to pass this two day trial that includes building your own igloo/snow fort shelter and spending the night in it. Having passed (I suppose) Herzog and Zeitlinger begin visiting various research stations in the surrounding area. Among them was a team studying seals whose call in the water under the ice sounds not unlike an R2 unit; if you didn’t know it was the seals, you’d swear there was a synthesiser near by.

Naturally, Herzog eventually gets to the Penguins but rather than going cutesy, Herzog manages to convey emotions both hilarious and haunting. The image of a lone penguin walking with haste towards the inner land of the continent is once funny, until Herzog’s narration points out that the little bird is about to walk 5,000 miles to its death, and even if researchers caught him and brought him back to his nest, he’d just try it again. What compels him, Herzog ponders, and until he can see inside the mind of a penguin I guess we’ll never know.

Borderline insanity seems to be inherent in the story Herzog is trying to tell; the proverbial craziness of the people that pack up their lives and head to Antarctica. We meet a man from Colorado that left a job in banking to join the Peace Corp before being a driver of a Terra-bus at McMurdo. The station’s plumber escaped oppression in his home country and always keeps a backpack of emergency provisions “just in case.” Many there are researchers and professors from the universities of the world, while others are gypsies travelling the world, looking for the next frontier to challenge them.

The notion of frontiers and the philosophy of exploration are two of Herzog’s many themes in the film. Desolation and isolation are others. He touches on climate change, but seems more interested in its implication, ie: the end of the human race. The film seems as much the director’s diary of the trip rather than a well-thought out and purposeful movie that the trip was built around.

Herzog brilliantly weaves a lot of different threads and creates an almost exhaustive look at the continent out of a scandalously short 99 minutes. With limited means and limited time, Herzog once again proves his skills and talent as a filmmaker, where others might have been overwhelmed by the subject. Encounters at the End of the World is the next best thing to being there.