Encounters at the End of the World

One of the Oscar nominees for Best Documentary Feature is Encounters at the End of the World, which is notable for being the first nomination for Werner Herzog, one of the more celebrated geniuses in cinema today. Herzog's work has heretofore probably been too "out there" for Academy tastes. His recent documentary Grizzly Man got snubbed, which caused a bit of a fuss, and his narrative films starring Klaus Kinski, like Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo would seem to clearly be the work of a madman.

Therefore it's somehow appropriate that Herzog would get his first Academy recognition for a documentary that outwardly appears to be completely routine; the kind of thing you could see almost any night on the Discovery Channel (which indeed produced it). But appearances lie. This film, about the men and women who work in Antarctica, is full of Herzogian weirdness. Who else would ask an expert on penguins the following: are there gay penguins, and do penguins go insane?

Almost at the outset, Herzog (who narrates) makes pains to state he is not interested in making another cuddly movie about penguins (referring to the big hit March of the Penguins). Instead he's interested in just who is drawn to this desolate place. He interviews laborers and scientists, including a linguist (who points out that Antarctica has no indigenous languages) and divers, who see a beautiful world of brilliantly colorful sea life beneath the ice. They are a diverse and odd bunch, most of them adventurers who would go mad in the humdrum work-a-day world the rest of us live in. One women had several stories to tell, including crossing Africa in a garbage truck and traveling from Ecuador to Peru in a sewer pipe.

Herzog is interested in the contrasts of the place. Where the workers live looks as drab as the ugliest mining town, but underneath the ice there are creatures that look as if they were created by Ray Bradbury. When accompanied by the music by Henry Kaiser and David Lindley the effect is quite stunning.

Oh, and there are no homosexual penguins, but there are penguin menage a trois. And penguins do get disoriented, a kind of insanity. Herzog films one, who heads off away from his group towards the mountains, where he will meet a certain death.