Werner Herzog: Encounters at the End of the World (2008)

[Chris Knipp]

Johann--I'm starting a new thread for this film because it's a new film, and I'm beginning with what you've written about it in your Herzog thread.--Chris

JOHANN'S REVIEW--IN TWO PARTS

A very human movie

Encounters at the End of the World

I went through many emotions watching Herzog's Encounters, and I think it may be the film that sits atop his filmography summit.

It seems at times as if he's really putting you on, and when I learned of his staging of scenes with Dieter Dengler, I was more apt to burst out laughing at some scenes and scenarios, "at the end of the world".

Herzog has moments of surreal beauty here, some really sublime times, especially underneath the ice of Antarctica, where he captures some ethereal, otherworldly ambiance and soul, real celestial moments.

His use of singers and choirs and the choices of songs they sing add some serious emotional, soul-stirring resonance.

This film is dedicated to Roger Ebert, and I got the vibe of a real inside-cinematic-joke, coupled with powerful, mute-exalted glorious imagery that could only be captured by this most eccentric of filmmmakers. Herzog is in a class all by himself, alone to face the universe's most toughest questions, with humour and grace and the relentless pursuit of the almighty image that will give salvation to it's humble viewer. Ebert must've been smiling through the whole screening. I sure was.

Amazing man, Werner Herzog.
He goes into fascinating areas and adds his own historic stamp.
Depending on what you know about this filmmaker depends on how much you love it.
__________________
"A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet"
-Orson Welles

___________________________________________

Johann review, part 2:


Yes, some scenes are staged. Painfully funny so, in some cases, like the "talent" show and the woman who just goes on and on in this monotone voice about her "adventures" (all made up I'm sure) like travelling across Africa in a garbage truck.
Love it, Werner.
Those were the scenes that made me laugh the hardest, along with the "buckethead" survival in a snowstorm sequence near the beginning.

Made for Discovery Films, Herzog goes to several basecamps or outposts to talk with the "travellers" and scientists who do research or work in Antarctica. Their stories vary greatly, and they're all interesting in one way or another.
Herzog assures us that he did not set out to make "another film about penguins", and his voiceover/narration is here to assault you. He speaks *seemingly* omnipotently, with a thick Bavarian accent. His pronounciation of some words should give you a laugh too. I've come to love his voiceovers. A Herzog voiceover is something that's hard to forget...He asks a researcher who studies penguins about gay penguins.
The man says he's never seen any evidence of that but he goes into a story about situations where you have two male penguins and one female..
Herzog asks if he's seen any penguins go crazy.
The man says "No, but they do get disoriented sometimes.."
Funny funny stuff. (and I'm paraphrasing here- go see the fucking film. It's the best non-fiction film of the year (with much staging in it :)

We learn about seals and how they survive in such a climate, and how they make noises to communicate with each other that sounds like Pink Floyd? I laughed at this bit. Herzog has some scientists put their heads to the ice and listen to the symphony of seal-speak.

He gives us a tour of Shackleton's original camp, preserved as it originally was, 100 years ago. He also shows us vintage stock footage of the Shackleton expedition and the recent underwater/under-ice footage that brought him to Antarctica in the first place.
That footage is astonishing.
It's like footage from another time-space continuum.
Another planet.
Strange sea-creatures, floating, intrauterine-like, with celestial voices, choirs accompanying it. Very Kubrick/2001...
Darling, Let's not ask for the stars
We already have the moon

Wonderful film, a triumph in a career of triumphs.
Herzog also has some philosophies that he presents in direct and not-so direct ways. This is a film that should give you a lot to think about. The shots inside ice caves, the shots of the vast, barren Hoth-like South Pole are quite arresting, quite visually stunning. There's also volcanos on that continent- we get great P.O.V. shot of the mouth and rim of a massively huge volcano, where researchers have set up equipment and cameras to monitor the volcanic activity. More laughs in this scene too...just watch it.

The scenes with the ice divers was incredible as well.
Any fan of cinema or travelling or pursuit of knowledge, check this Masterwork out. Extremely entertaining and extremely compelling.
__________________
"A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet"
-Orson Welles

--Johann.

[Chris Knipp]

From Richard Brody:
Werner Herzog’s first-person documentary about his visit to Antarctica is not only a jaundiced spin on nature travelogues but an oddly revealing distillation of his career-long nexus of obsessions. Arriving at the McMurdo base, he discovers such banal appurtenances as a bowling alley and A.T.M.s, and what he calls “abominations such as an aerobics studio and yoga classes,” and is seized with revulsion and a craving to get into the wilderness and experience the strangeness. His genre is the head trip, his worship of nature quasi-pagan, his chosen kin the adventurer élite, and his prejudice the dismissive lack of interest in everyone else. He is impressed by everything there that is overarching, awe-inspiring, intimidating, overpowering, crushingly colossal, or incomprehensibly strange, and his crabby, self-righteous misanthropy, which comes through in every frame, rises to apocalyptic dimensions: learning of the perils to polar ice caps posed by global warming, he foresees with barely repressed glee the extinction of humanity through climate change. Only the comedy latent in his own sour ironies distinguishes this film—and indeed many of the films in his career—from the grimly romantic antihumanism of Weimar-era mountain-climbing dramas.--NYer Short Takes June 9, 2008.
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/film/encounters_at_the_end_of_the_world_herzog

This is a pretty good description, though not accurate in every respect. I'm not sure Herzog has that kind of worship of nature; the link with Weimer-era mountain climbing dramas is interesting but hardly the note on which to end.

It's definitely vintage Herzog and I saw it back in June at Film Forum when it first opened and meant to review it but never got around to it. I wasn't sure I could do it justice. You say the passage about the penguins is funny, and it's true Herzog's persistent nagging of the penguin expert is amusing, but most people think the episode of the lost penguin is the most haunting and disturbing moment in the whole film. I was not struck so much by there being sequences that were staged or artificial or tales that were made up. Truth is stranger than fiction. This is one to remember and an essential addition to the Herzog oeuvre. It's worth remembering and pondering in terms of Herzog's views about nature and man and the future of both. It asks searching questions about those topics. However, I am not ready to say that it's the non-fiction film of the year. There are just so many good non-fiction films. It's more a self-portrait and rumination in the form of a non-fiction film, and as that not like any other documentary, rather in a separate category. . I assume you have seen Herzog's other recent underwater footage in The Wild Blue Yonder? I have the same fondness for Herzog though it's late-glooming; his voice definitely is extremely evocative of his whole personality and unique outlook. I was very favorably impressed by him when I saw him at the evening in his honor at the Castro Theater during the SFIFF of three years ago. He is a remarkable man, as remarkable as any of the men he has befriended and chronicled. To me Grizzly Mas is maybe more significant; it had a more clear and focused impact on me.

What does Brody mean when he says Herzog's worship of nature is "quasi-pagan", and is that actually true anyway?

[Johann]

Roger Ebert wrote a wonderful letter to Herzog that you can read at www.wernerherzog.com in the "NEWS" column on the main page.
He says what I and many others know and feel about Herzog's body of work.

[Chris Knipp]

Johann wrote:
"oddly revealing distillation of his career-long nexus of obsessions"?

Pretty fancy speak for Herzog just doing what he loves.
The lost penguin sequence was funny as hell to me as well.
I laughed hard man. I thought it must be all staged, what with Herzog's dead-serious voiceover and just the premise of it.
The penguin wasn't really lost either- he had a purpose didn't he?
He walked out there alone, determined to meet his fate, no?
I can't remember Herzog's exact words over the footage of the penguin waddling across the vast ice but I was laughing, man. It just seemed ridiculous to me.
And everybody around me in the theatre wasn't laughing either, which I found strange- I guess they bought into Herzog's making the scene haunting and disturbing. Who else would dream up such a scenario? Do you actually believe that there are penguins who can't take it anymore and decide to go their own way?
To face certain death? Who have no sense to stay where the food is? Where the fellow penguins are?
This is an example of a penguin losing it, and that point was already dismissed. Penguins don't do this.
Herzog is provoking the viewer.
I found it hilarious and awesome.

Very true that Herzog is dealing with themes of nature and man and existence in general.

I haven't seen The Wild Blue Yonder- I was going to buy it on DVD last year sight unseen but the HMV I where I used to shop in Ottawa sold out. I haven't gotten around to ordering it yet. Same with the Criterion Burden of Dreams.
This thread will be complete someday...
And I'm sad to say that I will only be seeing a handful of films at Toronto this year- work requires my presence...Movies do not pay my bills... ha ha

__________________
"A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet"
-Orson Welles

Last edited by Johann on 08-23-2008 at 09:14 AM

[Chris Knipp]

Apparently there is plenty of evidence of penguins getting lost and dying. The sad thing about the one in the film is that he is all alone, and that he is doomed. He has no way of detecting that he is headed in the wrong direction. Why this should be funny eludes me. It is, of course, somewhat anthropomorphizing to say that a penguin "can't take it any more" and "decides to go his own way." If Herzog says or implies that, he is playing around a bit. To say it's impossible for a penguin to have "no sense to stay where the food is" assumes a degree of "sense" or understanding that an individual penguin may not have. They are flock animals. Obviously when those stray from the flock, they're in trouble. What you can mean by saying that penguins don't "lose it" I don't know. Animals that don't have very high intelligence "lose it" all the time. That is, they go astray. Every notice how insects crawl or fly around in circles till they die?

[Chris Knipp]

Johann--ask somebody to show you how to cut and paste. It's easier to explain visually than in words. It takes all of five minutes to master--but is an essential tool.

[Chris Knipp]

Roger Ebert's letter to Herzog, occasioned by his having Herzog dedicate Encounters at the End of the World to him, and mentioned by Johann, can be found here (http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071117/PEOPLE/71117002) (on Ebert's website).

Evidently Ebert's account of an Encounter with Herzog last year and resulting observation that in his films "The line between truth and fiction is a mirage," is highly relevant to your interpretation of part of this new film.

It's an eloquent and expressive letter and also a poignant one in view of Ebert's continued productivity in the face of serious illness.

A story (http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20060803&slug=penguins03) of lost penguins.

[Johann]

Ebert is inspiring. He hasn't lost his real voice, his film lovers voice.
I get his Sun-Times e-mails and read every one.
He's also got a new book out, a best of type-thing called Awake in the Dark (great title for a book about movies).
Scorsese is quoted on the back, celebrating Roger's life in cinema.
Ebert talks about walking with giants when you see certain films.
So very true.
Herzog is certainly a giant.

The *lost* penguin seemed totally staged to me, and I laughed because of Herzog's narration and the context. You just have to see it and form your own opinion on it. I found it amusing that Herzog is speaking as if the penguin has found some inner purpose, a reason for breaking away and God help the man or other penguin who stands in his way. "Nature calls", as it were.
It just seemed out of place to me.
And after the scenes with the penguin researcher...it just seemed that much more funny to me. Maybe I'm wacked out on it.
That was my reaction.
He may have no idea that he's doomed, but Herzog's voiceover gives the impression that he's damning the torpedoes, that he's implying "don't try and turn me around! I have a mission!"
I don't know, it's all in the eye of the beholder.
Herzog is making the scene seem really heavy but I laughed man.
Why didn't he follow this lone penguin with his camera?
Why didn't he really find out if the little guy was doomed?
He just lets him waddle off...
Cruel Herzog! Why Werner?
Not make another film about cute penguins?
Well how about a film about a rogue loner penguin?
Would that not have been interesting?
A film about those penguins who get lost, apart from thier flock?

[Chris Knipp]

I have been a defender of Ebert all along, with the reservation that everyone acknowledges, that he's too nice to the movies he sees a lot of the time. I'm glad that Herzog is his chamnpion, and vice-versa.

I did see the lost penguin, Johann. And despite Herzog's ironic, quirky voice, I found the penguin's plight sad--and extremely odd. Maybe you should watch Gus Van Sant's Gerry, which is also about being lost, and see if you find that funny. I find getting lost terrifying. But no doubt about the fact that there are lots of chuckles built into Herzog's Encounters all along the way.

Either the "lost penguin" is "staged" or it is not. You can ask Herzog. But from what the expert said, some penguins do get "disoriented" and lose the herd instinct the enables them to survive, and without which in their unforgiving environment they're doomed.

What the penguinologist in the film said was that if you turned the penguin back the right way, he'd just turn around again, so it was no use. What you could do was what they do with those whole schools of lost penguins in South America, if you clicked on that link, which is transport the penguins bodily back to Penguinville. I don't know whether you have a view on this, Johann, but I personally hated The March of the Penguins and also the other uplifting (and visually manipulated) French bird flick Winged Migration. I think Herzog hates them too, and for obvious reasons. He was looking explicitly for penguin abnormalities, and bear in mind that the penguin expert he consulted with is someone who no longer has much to do with humankind, but consented to be questioned. As MOVIES ET AL., a film blog, puts it (http://moviesetal.blogspot.com/2008/08/review-encounters-at-end-of-world.html),
The answers, when we receive them, are simultaneously awe-inspiring and chilling. In Herzog's hand, the penguin is not an adorable figure or even an animal engaged in a crushing battle for survival. A penguin is instead, like anyone Herzog is interested in, a person near the end of their rope, buffeted by nature and unable to maintain normalcy. In Herzog's hands, penguin derangement is more touching than that of any human subject. I am a (restrained) newcomer to Herzog-mania, but all that I know so far tells me for Herzog nature is fundamentally inexplicable and terrifying, and man is not at the center of it, no matter how hard he tries to imagine so. "Cute penguins" are a way of imagining that nature's friendly and benign. All I could see in the March of movie was that the penguin life is incredibly brutal and harsh and remote from the human. But humans are animals too, and their lives can also be brutal and harsh: only we don't try to pretend that's not so. The paradox in Herzog's thinking is that he too anthorpomorphizes the lost penguin, if he is making it a "lost person" as David of MOVIES ET AL. says. I would tend just to see the penguin's behavior as a glitch in its directional system. In thinking or writing about "Man" and "Nature" as separate entities we tie ourselves in conceptual knots time and time again.

If you look up responses in print to the Lost Penguin Incident, which many find central to the film, words like "sad" and "haunting" come up frequently, but Andrew O'Hehir of Salon.com says it "at first is ridiculous and then tragic and then noble and then all those things at once."

That reconciles most of the issues and gets closer to the paradoxes of Herzog's style in Encounters. The people who live at the Pole are Lost Penguins themselves, who've spun away from the center of the globe and become solitary eccentrics--the kind of people Herzog seeks out and admires, even as he recognizes their pursuits as quixotic and absurd.

An apocalyptic outlook doesn't preclude humor: it may actually favor it. Compare The lines from "The Dodo" in Ogden Nash's verses for Saint-Saens' "Carnival of the Animals":


Cheer up, sad world, he said, and winked-
It's kind of fun to be extinct.

[Johann]

I`ve been thinking about what you`ve posted Chris and the truth is somewhere in everything we`ve written on this thread.

The lost penguin is either staged or not, despite the fact that they get lost and disoriented sometimes. As I said in my first line, I went through many emotions while watching. It`s hard to explain in text everything you felt at a movie.
Very hard to get across to a reader when they weren`t at the same screening, and their brains aren`t wired like yours.
The best you can hope for is that they`ll go see it, based on what meagre words you conjured.

Herzog is an especially difficult filmmaker to review- you yourself said you had a hard time doing it justice.
It`s hard to pinpoint what Werner`s driving at, where he wants the viewer to focus. But one thing`s certain: he`s gonna grab your eyes with some amazing imagery during that running time.
His pursuit of eccentric adventurers seems to be really important to him this late in his career: Graham from The White Diamond, Timothy Treadwell from Grizzly Man, the scientists and others from Encounters at the End of the World.

You can make a safe bet that his next work will be in the same vein, with the same quest for the strange and beautiful.

[Chris Knipp]

We are all Windowless Monads, Herzog would agree with that. I am a newcomer to Herzogology. I didn't write a review of this film at all, it slipped past me, I saw it but didn't quite seize the opportunity to comment on it. I think Grizzly Man was much more solid in my mind and much easier to write about. You are right about the concern with eccentric adventurers. Treadwell's own videos hwave recently been anthologized and shown.