Ever since he borrowed the other worldy footage of underwater Antarctica to make The Wild Blue Yonder (2005), Werner Herzog has wanted to make a film there himself. The National Science Foundation invited him to come. As, Herzog narrates in the introduction to Encounters at the End of the World, “I told them I would not make a movie about cute, fluffy penguins.”
Herzog wants exploration, not a story. Among the questions he wants to explore is why do chimpanzees–clearly superior primates–not domesticate lesser animals? “A chimpanzee could climb on the back of a goat and ride into the sunset. But it doesn’t. Why?” Herzog asks in his dry, german accented monotone. Of course, he’s not studying chimpanzees in Antarctica, but he sets the tongue-in-cheek tone for the film. He’s a funny narrator, not nearly so severe as in Grizzly Man. But it is Werner Herzog. So, although he’s funny, he’s constantly reminding us we’re all doomed.
The beauty of Antarctica is so monumental, its study is so fascinating. Herzog’s ambivalence is obvious toward the explorers breaking new ground in studying the origins of life while simultaneously making every spot they touch turn ugly. (McMurdo–a base of 1,000 inhabitants–looks worse than a makeshift coal mining town.) His ambivalence constantly upends the easy agenda. Herzog isn’t asking people to reduce their carbon footprint. He went to Antarctica to see a new world, show it to us in all its splendor and, perhaps, risk death a little. Antarctica is a stark slab of ice so vast and so loaded with dangers it serves as an exclamation point at the bottom of the globe warning us our species is just another one on an ancient planet. The planet can swallow us up and, someday for some reason, it will.
Herzog in Encounters at the End of the World has fun in Alaska, but he’s kind of like the funny guy at a funeral. Everyone’s laughing, but nobody is forgetting the situation we’re in. Herzog makes uncomfortable ideas, like we’re not invincible or as dominant as we like to believe, a little easier to swallow. Maybe with a little more humility we will develop more reverence for a place containing the last remnants of mystery on our planet.
Originally posted on:
SpoutBlog » Paul