Encounters at the End of the World

directed by Werner Herzog
USA; 2007

Herzog's on screen persona has changed slightly as of late, probably due to a newfound popularity after the success of Grizzly Man. Not that he's never been funny, far from it. Humor has been a major element in Herzog films since his auspicious beginnings, often providing viewers some stability through several of the more challenging sequences. His doc work especially is peppered with in-jokes and absurdities: the rooster man in White Diamond, a sardonic self-awareness in My Best Fiend, the entire concept behind How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck. This newest one, though, part of a string of American releases, has a different kind of humor. Werner this time is conscious of himself as a joke-teller, and yuks it up quite unabashedly. Where in the past the filmmaker would have made a much more subtle comment and allowed the humor to happen naturally, Encounters is lined with witticism after forced witticism, and Herzog's usual "play dumb" persona loses its charm. Whether this is a product of his "arthouse buzz" status or yet another element of filmmaking with which Herzog is experimenting remains to be seen.

The marvelous underwater photography, Herzog's reason for visiting the continent, is interesting enough, but quite rightly the filmmaker devotes more time to examining the strange underwater sounds of the seals and other arctic creatures. A weird natural phenomenon like some kind of alien implantation on earth, this is classic stuff of Herzogian mystique. The humans, though, are far more run-of-the-mill. There's the scarfed British volcano expert, soft-spoken in a hard environment, the career travelers, one of whom can fit herself into her own suitcase, the dry humor of an introverted penguin expert. Everywhere Werner goes, he digs up the fringe fascination that exists there, yet at the titular "end of the world," he appears comparatively bored. It took Herzog a trip to the most distant refuge of humanity to out-weird him, and all he can do is crack jokes about it.

The "bucket-head" sequence is a perfect statement about the film. Most documentary makers, on Discovery money, would have shot the penguins, the icebergs melting, the sunsets. For better results, Herzog finds the most interesting thing happening is a white-out training session where people tie themselves together and fix buckets over their heads to simulate zero visibility. A far cry from penguin shots, we instead have images of a string of humans with white 5-gallon buckets and painted-on faces, inching their way across the white arctic frost. Later a liberated penguin breaks from the flock and waddles away toward the mountains, alone. Later during a conference between two researchers excitedly discussing a new species discovery, Herzog obtusely asks, "Is this a great moment?" Images like these will stay with audiences for a long time, and Herzog continues to prove why he's one of the greatest but in the end, this installment should be considered a minor effort, whatever that means.