Reviews of Encounters at the End of the World
Displaying all 3 reviews
Benoît
25Jan12
Retour d’Herzog au documentaire, genre qu’il affectionne puisqu’il nous avait offert Ennemis intimes parlant de sa relation avec Klaus Kinski ou encore Grizzly Man.
Avec Encounters at the End of The World, le cinéaste annonce la couleur. Partir en Antarctique, mais pas question de filmer une fois de plus des manchots!
L’arrivée est saisissante. Bien loin des images clichées et de cartes postales lors de l’arrivée dans la base de McMurdo. Ca ressemble à une mine, il fait tout noir, il y a plein d’engins mécaniques. Difficile de se croire loin de toute forme de civilisation. Herzog part à la rencontre des différents scientifiques. Et coup de bol inouï, ils sont tous un peu fêlés ou à part comme le cinéaste. S’il est évident qu’on retrouve la patte d’Herzog dans ce documentaire, aimant montrer des personnages décalés dans ces films, il a bien choisi les gens qu’il allait interviewer entre mécaniciens se prenant à philosopher, simple soudeur fils de prince aztèque, etc. Difficile de croire que le cinéaste ne nous mène pas toujours en bateau sur ce coup. Et c’est peut-être le plus gros reproche du documentaire que l’on peut faire, c’est de vouloir faire un peu trop dans le décalé avec les personnes alors que la situation à elle-seule suffisait. On ajoutera aussi que la voix de Herzog avec son accent allemand, un peu ça va, mais elle est un rien trop présente à mon sens.
L’Antarctique, un vrai monde à part où les chercheurs y évoquent le calme presque angoissant. Des animaux hors du commun et surtout des images sous la glace qui sont tout simplement splendides.
De plus, on y va évidemment du message écologique pas trop lourd, où bon nombre de scientifiques pensent que la Terre régulera seule les êtres humains et qu’on est donc un jour condamné à disparaitre à cause des avancées technologiques qui nous permettent de ne plus rien faire par nous même (qui sait encore planter et cultiver une patate hein???).
Intéressant aussi le rapport d’un des scientifiques par rapport à Dieu, bien loin d’être en antagonisme.
Au final, des défauts, mais un très sympathique documentaire.
- Currently 3.0/5 Stars.
Mike Geraghty Jr.
1Nov09
Werner Herzog’s “Encounters at the End of the World” is one of the oddest, most beautiful films I’ve ever seen. Like “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “The Thin Red Line,” the film takes on the lyrical quality of a dream. Herzog takes us to the great continent of Antarctica, the “end of the world” as it were, and we meet several inhabitants of a research settlement, many of whom are scientists, philosophers, linguists – drifters looking to escape modern civilization. The icy terrain can be cruel and a mandatory survival skills class provides an apt metaphor, as participants place white buckets over their heads to simulate snow-blindness, only to fall off course, badly. We meet scientists ruminating on their discoveries via sci-fi classics like “Them!” and playing celebratory rock concerts after finding new species. The underwater photography is magnificent and surreal, revealing an alien-like world beneath the surface. Anyone looking for a film about cute penguins need not apply. While there is a brief encounter with penguins, it is easily the film’s darkest moment and is revealed in a single shot that is as profound as it is haunting – a lone penguin walking miles from his planned destination, perhaps because he has gone mad or perhaps because he feels something that we will never understand as human beings. That demented penguin, reduced to a blimp within the vastness of the frozen desert, heading steadfastly towards certain death, is arguably the most fascinating film moment of 2008. The film ends on a cosmic note, as one of the inhabitants quotes the philosopher Alan Watts, who said: “Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.” Few understand this better than Herzog.
- Currently 5.0/5 Stars.
moonmaster9000
3Aug09
Penguin suicide and prostitution; a linguist on a continent with no languages; Aztec royalty; the death of an empire. “Encounters at the End of the World” threatens to bury you underneath an avalanche of characters, images, and ideas, yet director Werner Herzog manages to create a mostly cohesive vision in this cerebral yet accessible documentary. It’s both an examination of a continent almost no one has seen, as well as a look at the humans who choose to inhabit the most hostile environment on our planet.
Herzog grew up in West Germany, and started making his fiercely original films in the late 1960’s. His 1972 film “Aguirre: The Wrath of God” became an international art house success and cemented his status as the leader of the German “New Wave” movement. Since then, he has gone on to direct over 38 films and documentaries, 15 television shows, and 4 operas. Throughout his career, he’s been known for experimentation in both his films and documentaries and their controversial subject matters.
In the aftermath of widespread critical and commercial success of his 2005 documentary “Grizzly Man”, the National Science Foundation awarded Herzog a grant to make a documentary in Antarctica on anything he chose, despite his warnings that he would not “come up with another film about penguins.” His questions about nature, he warned, are more difficult to answer.
In a way, Herzog has set out to make the anti “March of the Penguins.” His view of nature is neither romantic nor anthropomorphic, a fact that those who have seen “Grizzly Man” won’t find surprising. Through startling imagery and narration, Herzog presents a vision of nature as cold, violent, and devoid of humanness. Yet despite this detached appraisal of our universe, we find in his films and underlying respect and even awe for nature.
If anything, see this film for the chance to see a side of Antarctica you’re unlikely to find anywhere else. He records a startling landscape below the ice shelf, filled with creatures and sounds more alien than anything imagined in the science fiction lexicon. His camera follows deranged penguins abandoning their colony to make an intentionally suicidal death march into the Antarctic oblivion. And he discovers natural structures more spiritual than any cathedral.
Herzog also gives equal attention to the continent’s human inhabitants. They include a philosophizing Caterpillar-driver, a welder descended from Aztec royalty, an Eastern European refugee still haunted by his escape from behind the Iron Curtain, and a linguist on a continent with no native languages. Some inhabitants will fascinate, while others will bore.
One of the most darkly comic points of the film begins with a look at the original base station setup by the continent’s first explorers. Herzog contends that the members of this first team were the early protagonists of the world record mania and the pursuit of personal glory that saturates our many cultures today. Herzog follows the trajectory of this degeneration all the way to the present-day where Ashrita Furman, who, after claiming multiple world records in the most absurd forms of travel (including cartwheeling and walking while balancing a milk bottle on his head) declares his intentions to become the first person to pogo-stick his way to Antarctica.
I came away with the impression that Herzog couldn’t decide whether he’s more intrigued by the Antarctic wilderness or by his human subjects. And I can’t blame him. I was practically hypnotized by the entire mosaic, whether it was the startling underwater world of the Ross Ice Shelf, the ramblings and exploits of the cliché self-identified “travelers,” or the hard rock-stylings of the doomsday obsessed biologists.
The final (unstated) subject of the film is Herzog himself. This is no ordinary nature documentary or human biopic; it’s Herzog’s attempt to find meaning and purpose (or lack thereof) in a baffling universe. We feel his frustration and elation as the film progresses. At times he abruptly cuts off his interviewees, sparing us from their stories “that go on forever.” At other points, his camera lingers on the awe-inspiring majesty of the Antarctic wilderness. Some may find that his persistent presence detracts from the experience, but in fact it’s precisely what elevates the film beyond the realm of National Geographic and into art.
In his own inimitable style, Herzog has again managed to deal with the larger unanswered questions of our lives without resorting to metaphysical masturbation or gross simplifications.
- Currently 4.0/5 Stars.