Movie review: 'Encounters at the End of the World'

South Pole documentary tries, but falters a bit

By Roger Moore - The Orlando Sentinel

Published: 09/05/08


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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Encounters at the End of the World

•• 1/2• Rated: G. Director: Werner Herzog . Running time: 99 minutes. Theaters: Flicks.

Werner Herzog, the mainstream cinema's greatest mystic, ponders life, humanity, ice and penguins in "Encounters at the End of the World," a mesmerizing South Pole documentary that promises more than it delivers.

Quirky Antarcticans and stunning photography, placid sea lions and rumbling volcanoes take the stage as Herzog - who has veered between personal documentaries ("My Best Friend," "The Wild Blue Yonder," "Grizzly Man") and personalized fiction films ("Rescue Dawn") - struggles to find something coherent to say about wanderlust, the nature of freedom and the doomed human race.

It's an old man's meditation - fascinating and deep if a bit distracted.

"Who will I meet?" the German Herzog wonders on the cargo plane flying to McMurdo Station. "People with stories" is his answer, one obtained the moment he gets off the bus that drives him onto the base. The bus driver is an ex-banker turned Peace Corps volunteer turned adventure traveler.

These aren't tourists. These are traveling philosophers who have "fallen," more than one says, to this last frontier, "slid down the globe" to the South Pole on a journey of self-discovery.

He frets over the "abominations" our absurd junk culture has brought down there and frets, again and again, over the end of the human race. What he never quite does is explain his reasons for fearing humanity's doom.

What he gets at here is how much he and these various folk, scientists to pipe-fitters, have in common, their search for solitude, for lonely places.

He boasts that he was given a National Science Foundation grant and writ of passage to come there, "even though I told them I had no intention of making another movie about penguins." We're still waiting for him to brag about not doing another movie about emptiness and oddball loners.

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