Herzog’s Encounters at the Edge of the World explores Antarctica
 Enigmatic director Werner Herzog has, during nearly 50 years of making films, been drawn to the outskirts of man’s inhabitation of the planet. In Aguirre, the Wrath of God, he envisioned conquistadores making their way along the Amazon, and in Fitzcarraldo, an obsessed opera-lover tries to build an opera house in the middle of the Peruvian jungle.
Herzog portrays not only the outside of civilization, but its outsiders, people who cannot bear to lead ordinary lives, and who will go literally to the ends of the Earth to escape them.
The director himself has remained an outsider, refusing to work in traditional ways, refusing to be pigeonholed as a documentary or narrative filmmaker.
Which is why it will surprise no one who’s followed his career that he allowed this instinct to lead him to Antarctica in the documentary Encounters at the Edge of the World, the third offering of the AEC’s fall Independent Film Series.
Shot in Antarctica as part of the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, the film crew for“Encounters” consisted of Herzog, who recorded all production sound, and cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger. Sources about the film note, “The two went to Antarctica without any opportunity to plan filming locations or interview subjects, and had only seven weeks to conceive and shoot their footage. Herzog often met his interview subjects only minutes before he began shooting them.”
Herzog filmed not only the unearthly beauty of the frozen world, both above and below the ice, but also the lives of the 1,000 men and women who live in Antarctica, mostly in quest of scientific knowledge.
As one review describes the film’s subjects: “A scientist studies neutrinos, which are everywhere, yet elusive; he likens them to spirits. A researcher’s nighttime performance art includes contorting her body into a luggage bag. A survival guide teaches his students to survive whiteout conditions by wearing cartoon-face buckets over their heads. Animal researchers milk mother seals as part of their study. Volcanologists offer advice on what to do when a volcano erupts. A pipefitter shows us the anomaly in his hands that he says are a sign he descended from Aztec royalty. A former Colorado banker drives what he has christened Ivan the Terra Bus. An underwater diver shows his colleagues DVDs of apocalyptic sci-fi films like Them! And…we meet a penguin researcher who answers the filmmaker’s questions about homosexuality and insanity in his subjects. We also meet an individualist penguin, who breaks away from the other birds to run toward the mountains, facing certain death.”
No wonder Herzog found the subject irresistible. This film will be a must-see for fans of this true original.
Trackback(0)
 |
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form
