DVD Pick: Encounters at the End of the World

Visually-stunning documentary analyzes all aspects of Antarctica

BY EMIL TIEDEMANN

Although Antarctica takes center stage in the award-winning documentary feature film Encounters at the End of the World, the people that inhabit it are also uncovered, and how they exist within the most foreign borders on the planet. Lengendary German filmmaker Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man) explores all aspects of life on the one continent without skyscrappers, Bluetooth, or a Starbucks, from the "fluffy penguins" and siren-esque seals, to the microscopic entities that link us with the very beginnings of life on Earth.

But you'll be surprised with what Antarctica does have to offer, all vividly captured by determined cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger (Grizzly Man), who accompanies Herzog through all the brutality and the glory this isolated land conceals.

The film crew--sponsored by the National Science Foundation--take up residence in the largest community on the frozen landscape that is Antarctica, the U.S.-run McMurdo Station, which has culminated into large garages, small warehouses, businesses, homes, and plenty of gas-guzzling trucks. Herzog, who also narrates, interviews some of the characters that make up McMurdo's tiny population (never more than 1,300), including mechanics, tradesmen, drivers, and all types of scientists. All are also explorers, and each one has a fascinating story to tell.

But it's the elegance of the "frozen sky" below the town of McMurdo that captivates the audience. It's the hypnotic sounds that the native seals make in the frigid waters of the surrounding oceans. It's the enchanting ice cathedrals, the puzzling carriage of its wildlife, and it's the daunting extent of the land's reach. But most of all, Encounters intrigues us with just how fragile, yet how essential Antarctica really is to the rest of us, in a time when global warming is a global issue.

Henry Kaiser and David Lindley's indelible score is haunting, leaving me unsettled, but in a good way; perhaps a similar feeling of the secluded residents of this last Earthly frontier. In the words of Herzog himself, "Anarctica is not the moon, even though sometimes it feels like it." That pretty much sums it up.

4/5 stars