Encounters at the End of the World

Encounters at the End of the World is a delight of epic proportions. The 2007 documentary from German new-wave director Werner Herzog – his only film to earn an Oscar nomination – sees the intrepid filmmaker land in isolated Antarctica with a camera crew and a whole lot of rhetorical questions.

After a moderately slow start, Herzog finds not just one untold story in the overexposed white continent, but dozens. The general consensus among inhabitants of McMurdo Station, the largest settlement in Antarctica, is that the station serves as an end point for those who have spent their lives pursuing extremes. Such residents include a physiologist who performs body-contortion performance art at night, a researcher-cum-philosopher and a journeyman plumber, who explains that the configuration of his fingers links him to ancient Aztec royalty.

Encounters at the End of the World is most fascinating in its use of contrast. Alongside the outlandish characters are those with more specific reasons for their self-imposed isolation. A veteran of the Iron Curtain-era Soviet Union, now a McMurdo forklift driver, is unable to tell his story - instead, he displays the contents of his backpack, which he keeps fully stocked at all times should he choose to depart at a moment's notice. Scenes of breathtaking natural beauty, scored with otherworldly underwater seal sounds, are punctuated with man-made moments, such as when two scientists stage an impromptu electric guitar jam on the research facility's roof.

As an essay in global warming, the origins of existence and what drives many of us (including, as we are shown, the occassional penguin) to seek total isolation, Encounters at the End of the World is essential viewing.

Encounters at the End of the World will screen exclusively at Paddington's Chauvel Cinema from Thu 10 Sep.