Encounters at the End of the World

It's almost easy to forget that the great German filmmaker is responsible for such classic films as Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972), Fitzcarraldo (1982), or last year's terrific Rescue Dawn, a fictionalized remake of his own documentary Little Dieter Needs To Fly (1987). Lately, Herzog seems to exist first and foremost as a personality: take his infamous rescue of Joaquin Phoenix, or the time he was shot at at during an on-camera interview. Then, there are this year's seemingly random appearances in front of the camera: Herzog plays a lone German gambler in Zak Penn's The Grand and, in Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely, a priest eager to drink beer with the Pope.

I mention this because Herzog appears to have no serious intent in his new documentary Encounters at the End of the World. Instead, the film seems only one more step on Herzog's path to living oddity. Herzog needed to obtain permission from the National Science Organization in order to shoot in Antarctica, and as he states plainly at the start of the film, he wasn't going to make another movie about fluffy penguins. Instead, Herzog poses a series of ridiculous questions. Why, he asks, don't chimps, who possess such enormous intelligence, straddle goats and ride off into the sunset? A trippy graphic image is provided. Then comes black and white footage of cowboys riding on horses.

His inspiration, at least, is a good one: awe-inspiring footage of a diver's exploration beneath the ice. It's otherworldly down there, six feet below that layer of ice. Working with the scientists, Herzog films several long dives, offering no commentary, only ambient background music, allowing the audience to look and see.

For the most part, however, Herzog is more interested in the freaks above ground the nature itself. Everyone in Antarctica has a story, from Stefan Pashov, the Russian forklift driver with a degree in philosophy to Karen Joyce, an Australian computer technician who is popular at the local bar where she climbs into a suitcase and becomes a living piece of carry-on luggage.

Herzog gently mocks William Jirsa, a linguist in Antartica, who works as a machine technician. This kind lost soul bemoans the death of spoken languages. In an another interview, with David Ainley, a preeminent penguin scientist, Herzog asks only fatuous questions: Are penguins homosexual? Do penguins go insane? The answers, fortunately, are unexpectedly serious and interesting. Female penguins, we learn, go through enormous lengths -- what the scientist equates to prostitution -- to steal rocks from males.

Plenty of Herzog's interviews unearth fascinating truths -- and funny stories. Yet, I could never quite tell if Herzog is laughing with his subjects or at them. Encounters at the End of the World is just that: a series of encounters that never quite go into depth on any particular subject.

Starring: Werner Herzog
Directed by: Werner Herzog
Produced by: Julian P. Hobbs, Phil Fairclough, Dave Harding
Genres: Documentary
Running Time: 1 hr. 39 min.
Release Date: June 11th, 2008 (limited)
MPAA Rating: G
Distributors: ThinkFilm, Image Entertainment