DVD Review: “Encounters at the End of the World”
Rating: 88
William Jirsa, a linguist living on a continent without language, aptly describes the people who Werner Herzog follows in his nervy documentary, “Encounters at the End of the World.” He says of his fellow campers at Antarctica’s McMurdo Station, “If you take everybody who’s not tied down, they all sort of fall down to the bottom of the planet.” Herzog hates what he sees of McMurdo, a place that looks like a frozen mining camp with yoga and aerobics classes, but he’s fascinated by the untied people he finds there.
McMurdo is where residents train for whiteout conditions by walking with buckets on their heads, where scientists watch apocalyptic science fiction flicks for comfort, where researchers play guitars on top of the station when they find a frightening new sea creature under the ice. They listen to underwater sea lion calls that sound like Pink Floyd. They grow hydroponic tomatoes.
Featuring underwater photography and music by guitarist/research diver Henry Kaiser, “Encounters at the End of the World” is at turns beautiful and harrowing — it’s “not another penguin movie.” When Herzog, ever the slash-and-burn realist, asks a scientist if there is “such a thing as insanity among penguins?” he gets his answer as we see a penguin become disoriented and waddle toward the faraway mountains — and its certain death. As this film indicates, we all might be following that bird: a giant volcanic force under Antarctica could destroy all life at any time. “End of the World” indeed.
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