Encounters at the End of the World (2007)

Encounters at the End of the World: Directed by Werner Herzog. With Werner Herzog, Scott Rowland, Stefan Pashov, Doug MacAyeal. Film-maker Werner Herzog travels to the McMurdo Station in Antarctica, looking to capture the continent’s beauty and investigate the characters living there.

“Encounters at the End of the World is a quirky and interesting film, definitely a departure from your average dry science documentary or eye-candy nature film, though it has elements of both.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIt focuses predominantly on the odd collection of people drawn to live in an Antarctic research station, and to a slightly lesser degree on the oddness of the region itself, and the bizarre bits of scientific trivia that can be found there. Then there the bonus meanderings about the ultimate doom of humanity and whether we originally emerged from the sea onto land to escape the u0026quot;horroru0026quot; of marine ecosystems.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eMany of its parts are fascinating, but for me, it didnu0026#39;t quite come together as a whole. It drifted in a lot of different directions, but seemed overall to be lacking in focus a bit. There were also a couple of elements that disturbed me a little – one was the inconsistency of talking about how humanity is destroying itself one moment, and then bashing u0026quot;tree huggers and whale huggersu0026quot; the next. I guess itu0026#39;s OK to notice that weu0026#39;re damaging the world, but not to try and do something about it? The other was that in some cases he seemed to be going out of his way to depict the people he interviewed in embarrassing ways, with things like leaving the camera lingering on them after the interview appeared to be finished, as they stood nervously, apparently trying to figure out if it was over or not.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eBut on the whole I would recommend it — the flaws are offset by some impressive visuals (especially the underwater footage), dry humour, interesting ideas to ponder, and a really great soundtrack by Henry Kaiser and David Lindley, which work very well with the oddness of the content.”