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Welcome to Antarctica -- like you've never experienced it. You've seen the extraordinary marine life, the retreating glaciers and, of course, the penguins, but leave it to award-winning, iconoclastic filmmaker Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man, Rescue Dawn) to be the first to explore the South Pole's most fascinating inhabitants...humans. In this one-of-kind documentary, Herzog turns his camera on a group of remarkable individuals, "professional dreamers" who work, play and struggle to survive in a harsh landscape of mesmerizing, otherworldly beauty -- perhaps the last frontier on earth.
"Imaginative power!" Entertainment Weekly
"Dazzling!" Los Angeles Times
"...as fascinating as it is humbling, even when Herzog ventures a little too far down eccentricity's back alley." Rick Groen, The Globe and Mail
"An engaging and generous profile of the fascinating folks who have chosen to live at the end of the world." Sean Axmaker, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
"Hauntingly beautiful!" The New York Times
Editor's Note
Werner Herzog returns to the non-fiction world once again with ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD, his latest exploration into the dangerous beauty that exists in nature. This time, Herzog travels to Antarctica in order to deliver a funny, visually arresting, dreamlike glimpse into Earth's most mysterious continent. Herzog begins by interviewing the many bizarre and unique individuals who have chosen to live and work in the secluded, frozen McMurdo Station. These characters aren't far removed from Herzog's quirkiest narrative features; as he interrogates them, it is clear just how amused he is by their off-kilter personalities. After a while, he leaves the humans behind in order to focus on the creatures that populate the continent--most notably, seals and penguins. In one unforgettable sequence, a lone penguin breaks off from the pack and ventures off into the distance, never to be heard from again. Herzog's subsequent questioning of an expert, in which he contemplates a penguin's ability to become deranged, is the director at his most overtly humorous--but there's a sincerity to his questioning that keeps it from sarcasm. The film builds to a gorgeous, haunting conclusion, in which producer/composer/cohort Henry Kaiser takes a camera along with him deep into the sea, under all of that ice, at which point we are exposed to magical visions that feel downright otherworldly. Deftly balancing humor and seriousness, ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD is another gem in Herzog's already legendary canon.
| Features | Dive Locker Interview: Werner Herzog Talks With Rob Robbins & Henry Kaiser | | Audio Commentary With Director Werner Herzog, Producer Henry Kaiser, & Cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger | | Audio: English DTS HD 5.1 Surround Sound, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound, PCM Stereo | | Featurettes: Under The Ice, Over The Ice; South Pole Exorcism; & Seals & Men | | Interactive Menus | | Jonathan Demme Interviews Werner Herzog | | Original Theatrical Trailer | | Scene Selection | | Subtitles: English, Spanish | | This Is A Blu-Ray DVD Made For Blue-Laser Format Players Which Produce Higher Quality Picture & Sound |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Image Entertainment |
| Release Date: 11/18/2008 |
| Running Time: 100 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 2007 | | Catalog ID: 5081 | | UPC: 00014381508154 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English | | Available Subtitles: English, Spanish | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Widescreen 1.78:1 |
| Cast & Crew | Henry Kaiser - Composer | | Julian P. Hobbs - Executive Producer | | Werner Herzog - Screenwriter | | David Lindley - Composer | | Henry Kaiser - Producer | | Phil Fairclough - Executive Producer | | Dave Harding - Executive Producer | | Peter Zeitlinger - Director of Photography | | Erik Nelson - Executive Producer | | Werner Herzog - Narrator | | Werner Herzog - Director |
| Awards |
Independent Spirit (2009) | | | Werner Herzog, Nominee, Best Documentary | |
Oscar (2009) | | | Werner Herzog, Henry Kaiser, Nominee, Best Documentary, Features |
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| | Professional Reviews | New York Times
"Few filmmakers make the end of days seem as hauntingly beautiful as Werner Herzog does..." 06/13/2008Film Comment
"In ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD we are offered a glimpse into a dynamic terrain, one whose landscapes are in environmental flux due to global warming..." 05/01/2008 p.71 Rolling Stone
3.5 stars out of 4 -- "Herzog is one of a kind. His new doc is an event you watch in awe as you marvel at its wonders." 06/26/2008 81 Entertainment Weekly
"The stunning images aren't enough for Herzog....He wants us to see how these quirky researchers, in their lust to explore, are acting out a drive as primitive as nature: the need to break away from the world in order to find it." -- Grade: A 06/20/2008 p.50 Los Angeles Times
"The images captured by Herzog and cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger are dazzling all on their own, finding the disorienting psychedelia that is nature at its weirdest." 06/27/2008 Total Film
4 stars out of 5 -- "Herzog imparts an infectious awe at nature's wild wonder." 08/13/2009 Reel.com 10 of 10
Werner Herzog, the P.T. Barnum of the art movie, is surely one of the most enduring iconoclasts in film history. Spreading his arch skepticism and divine nihilism over 50 films in the last five decades, Herzog, forever battling an unforgiving and unconcerned universe in his fiction and non-fiction efforts, has finally met his match in the silent and still white expanse of Antarctica in his new documentary Encounters at the End of the World...In a burst of cavalier nuttiness, the National Science Foundation and the Discovery Channel paid Herzog to travel to McMurdo Station--a community of 1,100 scientists, researchers, and screwballs--to delve into the mysteries of Antarctica...Herzog's conclusions are typically bleak. Declaring that human presence on the planet is not sustainable and, after the insignificance of man is chillingly highlighted (in more ways than one) in a sequence on the face of an active volcano, he concludes "the end of human life is assured." His mysticism does not allow him to dwell too long on problems of global warming as his ultimate concerns are about a post-mankind universe that will purge itself of that pesky species...He does however manage to get into a discussion about penguins in spite of himself and fixes his gaze onto a "disoriented" penguin who chooses not to follow the rest of a group of penguins heading to sustenance in the open water. The insane penguin decides instead to run on his own towards the highland mountains in the distance and to sure death. It's as pure a depiction of a Herzog actor as Klaus Kinski or Bruno S. ever could have illustrated. This sad penguin running headlong to its doom is the most haunting (and haunted) shot in all of Herzog's oeuvre. - Paul Brenner
Chicago Sun-Times 10 of 10
Read the title of "Encounters at the End of the World" carefully, for it has two meanings. As he journeys to the South Pole, which is as far as you can get from everywhere, Werner Herzog also journeys to the prospect of man's oblivion. Far under the eternal ice, he visits a curious tunnel whose walls have been decorated by various mementos, including a frozen fish that is far away from its home waters. What might travelers from another planet think of these souvenirs, he wonders, if they visit long after all other signs of our civilization have vanished?...Herzog's method makes the movie seem like it is happening by chance, although chance has nothing to do with it. He narrates as if we're watching movies of his last vacation -- informal, conversational, engaging. He talks about people he met, sights he saw, thoughts he had. And then a larger picture grows inexorably into view. McMurdo [Research Station] is perched on the frontier of the coming suicide of the planet. Mankind has grown too fast, spent too freely, consumed too much, and the ice cap is melting, and we shall all perish. Herzog doesn't use such language, of course; he is too subtle and visionary. He is nudged toward his conclusions by what he sees. In a sense, his film journeys through time as well as space, and we see what little we may end up leaving behind us. Nor is he depressed by this prospect, but only philosophical. We came, we saw, we conquered, and we left behind a frozen fish...His visit to Antarctica was not intended, he warns us at the outset, to take footage of "fluffy penguins." But there are some penguins in the film, and one of them embarks on a journey that haunts my memory to this moment, long after it must have ended. - Roger Ebert
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