ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature

Directed by Werner Herzog

The Plot:

Herzog travels to the Antarctic community of McMurdo Station, the headquarters for the National Science Foundation and home to eleven hundred people. There he studies those who want to step off the map and where everyone seem to be full-time travelers and part-time workers. Beyond the settlement, Herzog ventures from the under-ice depths of the Ross Sea to the brink of the Mount Erebus volcano.

The Good:

The best parts of this film are the interviews with people who actually live in Antarctica. The stories of how they ended up down there are fascinating. They all seem to be amateur philosophers seeking a peaceful way of life, from a former Wall Street Banker to an Indian claiming to be descended from Aztec Kings, to a guy who escaped from a Russian prison who keeps a fully packed survival backpack at all times in case he has to bug out. Now they are the plumbers, mechanics and bus drivers of McMurdo. There's also a funny part when Herzog, talking to a penguin specialist, asks him if there are gay penguins and insane penguins. Which there are! And penguin prostitutes! No lie!

The Bad:

The other parts of the film are not quite compelling. Herzog journeys to a few of the scientific stations and slips into long visually compelling sequences of underwater (and under ice) photography and frozen volcanic caves. While beautiful, they are long and set to this vocal chorus type music guaranteed to induce sleep.

The Ugly:

The film seems to lack direction. When it was over, i wondered what the hell was it really trying to say. It seems like Herzog had an opportunity to go to Antarctica, but couldn't come up with a cohesive story to tell. So he threw together the best footage he had.

There's this one part where an insane penguin heads off inland where he is doomed to perish. They said even of they went out to get the penguin, he would still try to keep on heading inland.

: ( Penguin Suicide is a big problem.

MOVIE CHEETAH'S GRADE: C

This is the first Academy Award nomination for director Werner Herzog and producer Henry Kaiser, but they should have gotten one for the fantastic documentary Grizzly Man (2005).