Review: ‘Encounters at the End of the World’

[Disclaimer: This review has a margin of bias of approximately +/- one half star.] I can’t help it! I am such a shamefully loyal and obsessed Werner Herzog fan-boy (if that’s possible for such a filmmaker) that its difficult for me to review any Herzog film with 100% objectivity.

The first thing I want to point out about ‘Encounters…’ is that its NOT another nature documentary. Not that I dislike nature documentaries, but I think some people are getting burnt out with all the recent nature-related titles that have surfaced recently. This included Herzog, as he pointedly makes clear during the film. While your average “standard” documentary strives to avoid making the documentarian’s presence known, this has never been a concern for Herzog. However, he does a very good job of keeping his presence to a minimum and doesn’t flaunt himself like Morgan Spurlock and Michael Moore do in their films.

Much to the contrary, Herzog’s film deals with some very familiar subject matter but is able to once again give a fascinating new perspective on his favorite subject … us. Herzog is obsessed with people, the unpredictable nature of the human condition and the utter absurdness that is often what we call our lives. Most of Herzog’s many films are fictional narratives, but he’s done his share of documentaries, including the well-known ‘Grizzly Man’ and the lesser known films like ‘The White Diamond’ and ‘Wheel of Time’.

Encounters at the End of the World is just as much about we humans as any of his other films … it just happens to take place in Antarctica. Herzog explains how he was invited to travel there by the National Science Foundation and how he clearly explained he would NOT be making another movie about penguins. Of course, the cute little critters do make an appearance in the film, but Herzog brilliantly manages to capture a wonderfully metaphorical scene of a disoriented penguin, wandering hopelessly to his certain death. The scene plays brilliantly with the overall tone and theme of ‘Encounters…’ which deals greatly with the notion of travel and how we humans incorporate it into our lives.

Herzog arrives at the base camp and proceeds to interview and document the various residents living there, who are all as diverse and eccentric as one could imagine. From a shop worker who’s part Apache and part Mayan, to a man who escaped from the deadly clutches of the Iron Curtain to a woman who has the most incredibly bizarre collection of personal travel anecdotes. There is still some beautiful photography to experience in this film, but even that is merely a tool for Herzog to delve into the mind of yet another of his “real-life” characters, that being the man who photographed much of the footage used in this film. Adding icing to the cake, ‘Encounters…’ is made even more amazing to watch by the hauntingly beautiful score by Henry Kaiser and David Lindley.

[rating:4.5/5]