| Encounters at the End of the World | ||||
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Yet this film isn’t about the grandeur and mystery of the South Pole, but rather the grandeur and mystery of the magnificent bastards who choose to live and work in the place. Warner Herzog takes us on an adventure all the way to Antarctica to meet the people who are genius or eccentric enough to live there. In the words of one guy (a linguist/ computer expert running a green house) describing himself and his fellow ex-pats from around the globe “if you take everybody who’s not tied down they eventually fall to the bottom of the earth.”
In one sequence we are introduced to a pair of zoologists who recently discovered three heretofore unknown living species. How do they celebrate this amazing breakthrough? By grabbing their guitars and having an impromptu electrical jam session on the top of their hut. We also get to meet a man who has been studying and living with penguins by himself for the past two decades. We don’t get the “gosh ain’t those penguins cute” treatment though. Instead Herzog grills the guy on penguin homosexuality and asks if he’s ever seen any penguins degenerate into insanity. And these are only a few examples of the characters in this most interesting of nature films. The underlying theme of the project seems to be the unanswered question, “Why?” Why these people, why this place? This is a journey, ultimately, not to the land itself, but into the hearts and minds of the people from all over the globe who consciously choose to be there. In the end what Herzog accomplishes to do is pull back the curtain from this most mysterious of locales to reveal… a modern day commune of dreamers and misfits defrosted for the new millennium. Nice! This film, to say the least, was not what I expected it to be. And that is precisely why you should definitely check it out. Oh yeah, and there is a whole second disk filled with pretty killer extras too.
Werner Herzog’s Encounters At The End Of The World is available today on DVD and Blu-ray from Image Entertainment. Encounters at the End of the World will be available for $27.98 SRP on Two-Disc DVD and $35.98 on Blu-ray™. DVD http://www.amazon.com/Encounters-End-World-Werner-Herzog/dp/B001DWNUD8 Blu-ray http://www.amazon.com/Encounters-at-End-World-Blu-ray/dp/B001DWNUDI   |
Be forewarned: This is NOT your father’s nature documentary. O yes, there are grand sweeping views displaying Antarctica’s stark, seemingly never ending vistas lovingly shot. And yes, there is a haunting score made up mostly of melodic strings and somber choral chants. And yes again, there is the droning, nap inducing voice over of an auteur totally enamored with his subject.
Herzog takes us places documentary crews have been before, like a campsite of underwater divers studying “a horribly violent world” of underwater creatures where monsters await to “rend your flesh”. But rather than creating National Geographic style animal porn, he chooses to focus on the scientists themselves. In this case a band of Lovecraftian lovin’ adventurers who wallow away their off hours watching creature features from the 50’s.