Not Quite a Film Review: Encounters at the End of the World

I've been trying to write a film review of Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World (2008), but it hasn't coalesced, so I'll just post it as some thoughts on this film which I think everyone should see ASAP.

Although Werner Herzog claims in his latest film Encounters at the End of the World that he’s not making another movie about fluffy penguins, he does claim to be making a movie about the dreams of the people compelled to inhabit Antarctica, a cold an desolate place, but strangely enough throughout the course of the film we see that the dreams of these people may have something remarkably in common with the uncommonly deranged penguin Herzog manages to film on the frozen continent.

This film may be the best documentary of 2008, and is yet another great achievement in Herzog's oeuvre alongside his other great documentaries, which include Grizzly Man, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, and The White Diamond.

Visually the film is mesmerizing; there are numerous incredible shots of the barren glacier continent, and Herzog takes us into regions explored by few in the entire course of human history. For nearly that alone the film is worth seeing.

But the film is also a classic Herzogian composition complete with: off-beat characters whom the camera focuses on till the point it becomes just slightly uncomfortable, incredible respect for the idiosyncrasy of the individual’s story, homage to the beauty of nature, and a celebration of humanity’s insatiable curiosity.

Herzog’s juxtaposition of interview, imagery and voice-over narrative insight demonstrates the subtle irony that the consequence of science and technology, a human drive we all honor and herald--this very drive to improve on nature, to travel to places like Antarctica where humans are absurdly illequipped to thrive--is also the reason human life in its current context is unsustainable on Earth. Herzog captures the beauty and the tragedy that is this human story resounding from Antarctica with his signature acumen. His profound respect for nature and for the stories his subjects tell, whether they are a world renown scientist or a working class welder, and his obsessive dedication to portraying them as cinematically accurately as possible reminds of a passage from Nabokov’s Pale Fire which I slightly revised to fit a different context: but sometimes when the director paced back and forth across the set, or sat down for a moment on his chair, or yelled “cut” to go mediate in his trailer, I could distinguish the expression of passionate interest, rapture and reverence with which he visualized the story coming to life image by image in his mind, and I knew that whatever my atheistic friend might say in denial, at that moment our Lord was with him.