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Released on DVD and Blu-Ray 31 August 2009
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This film is true ‘Werner Herzog’, the influential German New Wave film-maker, in that it combines his passions of storytelling about people with intriguing talents and their intervention with nature. However, in a slightly different twist to the Herzog norm, the emphasis is not on man’s conflict with nature, but man’s passion to understand, harmonise with, and protect it. For Herzog, what started out as a documentary on diving under the simply stunning, underwater iceberg scenery at the South Pole, also turned into an utterly fascinating insight into the types of people willing to give up some of the home comforts of civilisation and live in such barren terrain as McMurdo, Antarctica.
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What you get from Herzog’s documentary is a wonderful nature programme with some of the most beautiful underwater photography ever seen of ‘monster-like’ deep-sea creatures and urchins, combined with the outlandish personal stories of the ‘community’ that inhabit this magical place. And there are some great characters whom each, alone, warrant an entirely separate film just focused on them, such as the isolated and rather ineloquent penguin expert, marine ecologist David Ainley, to Samuel S. Bowser, a cell biologist with many diving hours who pensively completes his last ever freezing dive. Indeed, we only get snippets from each that proves slightly frustrating and increases the desire to know much, much more!
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The isolated community are a bunch of intellectual dreamers from all walks of life who have all ended up at the ‘bottom of the world’ through their desire for adventure and travel - much like the original explorers we see in the old footage of Captain Robert Falcon Scott and Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton. These colourful present-day explorers just happen to have the professional skills needed to bring more answers about the beginning of civilisation - and end of it.
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In fact, Herzog resists the temptation to blatantly emphasis the effects of climate change, as such - quite the opposite. There is only one reference to this from the local plumber. The rest of the film takes a bystander’s point-of-view (with Herzog’s questioning and narration off-camera), resulting in some comical moments, like the bizarre but necessary ‘buckethead’ training methods adopted by the survival school instructor, and other more heart-wrenching moments when one penguin goes off to its certain death in the snowy mountains.
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As we glide under the great plates of ice, the film accompanies the truly mesmerising underwater shots with a mixture of orchestral/choir music, combined, at times, with the real and rather entrancing ’siren-sounding’ recordings of seals under the ice. Reality is juxtaposed with surrealism in this fascinating, touching and divinely breathtaking film that this ever thoughtful and thought-provoking film-maker has created to allow us another privileged invite into other worlds.
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By Lisa Keddie
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Synopsis
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There is a hidden society at the end of the world. One thousand men and women live together under unbelievably close quarters in Antarctica, risking their lives and sanity in search of cutting-edge science.
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Now, for the first time, an outsider has been admitted. In his first documentary since Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog, accompanied only by his cameraman, traveled to Antarctica, with rare access to the raw beauty and raw humanity of the ultimate Down Under.
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The film is Herzog’s latest meditation on nature, explores this land of Fire, Ice and Solitude.
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Film Facts
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Official site: http://www.encountersfilm.co.uk/
UK Release Date: 24th April 2009
Director: Werner Herzog
Distributor: Revolver Entertainment
Certificate: U
Run-time: 99 mins
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Video on Real.com
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Trailer:
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