Documentary Description
Werner Herzog is a master filmmaker. Stretching back decades,
genres, languages, styles and scope, he continues to be a pioneering
creative force. Encounters at the End of the World is the newest
reminder of his skill, and joins the growing list of
ecologically/environmentally centered documentaries gracing us, the
most famous being Davis Guggenheim/Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.
Herzog’s Encounters is a somewhat meandering trip to the
Southernmost place on Earth, inspired by footage of Antarctica’s marine
world taken by a friend of his. From the early images of crammed
passengers on a cargo plane to the buckethead testing of what to do to
get to the outhouse in a blinding blizzard to absolutely stunning
footage of underwater life to a wayward penguin’s seemingly suicidal
venturing into mountainous country, Herzog has fashioned together a
commentary on life in one of our harshest environments and the quality
and experience of what it is like. An ethereal, primal musical score
accompanies the picture, which is narrated by Herzog, like his fabulous
Grizzly Man, but more muted and ponderous.
But the film in not merely a Discovery Channel opportunity to remind
us of the staggering beauty that rests so far away, so deep and
unhospitable. Though the Discovery Channel produced or funded it,
Herzog infuses, through interviews of people who find themselves shaken
down to this vagabond paradise, a philosophical questing that appears
both wonderfully progressive and positive, to his own harsh expression
of human futility.
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