Encounters At The End Of The World

One of the more recent movies from Werner Herzog, a documentary on the Antarctic and those who have come to be there.
Herzog is, more than ever, happy to insert himself in the frame. If not literally in th image, his narration not only tells the story but is descriptive, and even discusses his own personal relation to what is going on. This is surprising, and on occassion very funny, which Herzog himself obviously realises, even sometimes playing on his public persona. His dismissal of man's settlements, the attempt to draw out the taciturn penguin-watcher, and the suicidal creature he observes; classic, hillarious, passionate in their own deadpan way moment.
Herzog clearly has something to say here, beyond the image. When he speaks over the top of a linguist we know we have that rare beast; a Herzog film where Herzog does not just want to observe, but to act. The long shots for the interviews, the weird sideways uses of animals and so on, may seem like classic Herzog, but in fact this is a very different Herzog picture in its use of tone.
This film does use its huge wide landscapes, the enormous skies and the perfect whitenesses. But Herzog is not overly bothered about these much seen aspects. He enjoys the confined spaces underwater, or trenches in the ice. More than that, his use of a handheld camera can on occassion give a narrow view; of man building its own lifeworlds in a chaotic and impossibly wide area.
Herzog uses his usual tropes of the crusading, insane outsider drawn to the ends of the earth, looking for transcendence in a doomed, idiotic manner. His views on this are complex, and he explores them with depth and intelligence. In this documentray he combines this study with more of himself, and a new enviroment. On occassion striking, a new use of old material and a finding of new material. Gripping, beautiful, a fine work.