Film Review: Encounters at the End of the World

Title: Encounters at the End of the World

Director: Werner Herzog

Producer: Henry Kaiser

Screenwriter: Werner Herzog

Cinema: Peter Zietlinger

Editor: Joe Bini

Music: Henry Kaiser, David Lindley

Year: 2007 (99 minutes)

Synopsis: Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man, Rescue Dawn) confirms his standing as poet laureate of men in extreme situations with Encounters at the End of the World. In this visually stunning exploration, Herzog travels to the Antarctic community of McMurdo Station, headquarters of the National Science Foundation and home to eleven hundred people during the austral summer (Oct-Feb). Over the course of his journey, Herzog examines human nature and Mother Nature, juxtaposing breathtaking locations with profound, surreal, and sometimes absurd experiences of the marine biologists, physicists, plumbers, and truck drivers who choose to form a society as far away from society as one can get. Not just another penguin movie – the humans share equal time with nature as Herzog explores his newest frontier and provides us with his unique point of view of this icy wilderness at the bottom of the world.

Review: In the interest of full disclosure, I’m not a fan of Werner Herzog. I feel that his films are often insincere and are more about him that the character(s) he’s following. I also don’t trust him to be completely truthful in his documentaries. He’s proven that he is willing to add fiction to his films in order to make a point. To me, that’s not acceptable. Having said all of this, I’ll try to be objective in reviewing Encounters at the End of the World. Here goes:

I didn’t like it. The film is visually stunning, but the story is disjointed. Throughout the film, I kept trying to figure out what Herzog was trying to say. When the film ended, I still didn’t know.

In all fairness, not everyone agrees with me. Kevin Kelly called the film a “brilliant film-poem.” None other than Roger Ebert loved the film and even felt compelled to write a letter to Herzog after seeing Encounters at the End of the World. His letter said in part:

“In the process of compiling your life’s work, you have never lost your sense of humor. Your narrations are central to the appeal of your documentaries, and your wonder at human nature is central to your fiction. In one scene you can foresee the end of life on earth, and in another show us country musicians picking their guitars and banjos on the roof of a hut at the South Pole. You did not go to Antarctica, you assure us at the outset, to film cute penguins. But you did film one cute penguin, a penguin that was disoriented, and was steadfastly walking in precisely the wrong direction – into an ice vastness the size of Texas. ‘And if you turn him around in the right direction,’ you say, ‘he will turn himself around, and keep going in the wrong direction, until he starves and dies.’ The sight of that penguin waddling optimistically toward his doom would be heartbreaking, except that he is so sure he is correct.

But I have started to wander off like the penguin, my friend. I have started out to praise your work, and instead have ended up describing it. Maybe it is the same thing. You and your work are unique and invaluable, and you ennoble the cinema when so many debase it. You have the audacity to believe that if you make a film about anything that interests you, it will interest us as well. And you have proven it.

With admiration,

Roger