Film
Encounters At The End Of The World
Cert:(U)
Dir. Werner Herzog
USA , 99 mins, 2007
Cast: Documentary with: Werner Herzog, Henry Kaiser, David Ainley, Douglas MacAveal
Nominated for Best Documentary at this year's Oscars, Antarctic travelogue Encounters at the End of the World belatedly marks the first Academy recognition for an individual widely acknowledged as one of cinema's most remarkable talents: Werner Herzog. This is among the maestro's most accessible and entertaining enterprises to date – indeed, though the underlying message is serious, the film is often laugh-out-loud hilarious.
Since 1962, Munich-born Herzog has established himself as the “maverick's maverick”, carving out a unique, prolific career that has included such classics as Aguirre - Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser and documentaries like Lessons of Darkness and My Best Fiend, the latter chronicling his long, stormily productive relationship with legendarily volatile actor Klaus Kinski. More recently his Grizzly Man and Rescue Dawn confirmed a late-career renaissance for the Los Angeles resident.
Encounters at the End of the World sees Herzog venturing south, to some of the most extreme and inhospitable places known to man, asking what kind of people are drawn to such an environment. Announcing that he will eschew the “fluffy penguins” approach, Herzog conducts a series of interviews with maintenance workers, an iceberg geologist, a seal-camp zoologist, a diver, a biologist, a penguin expert, a vulcanologist and a physicist.
The results build into an informative, visually ravishing study of this most unknown of continents, saying much about the planet as a whole and where it's heading: the title has, we soon realise, at least two meanings. The results have delighted audiences and critics alike all over the world, featuring in numerous “Top Ten of 2008” lists. Chicago Sun-Times’ Roger Ebert hailed it as “subtle and visionary,” while JR Jones of the same city's Reader magazine saluted “an idiosyncratic expression of wonder.”
Neil Young
The Life and Work of Werner Herzog
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