Sydney Film Festival 2008 – Encounters at the End of the World Review

Encounters at the End of the World is a documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog, and aims to provide a look into the lives and minds of the people who would choose to live and work in one of the world’s most remote and most beautiful locations.

Herzog won some important awards and gained a lot of attention for his controversial documentary Grizzly Man, and it is a film that still divides audiences today. Personally, I find Herzog’s unique approach to documentary making simultaneously refreshing and frustrating.

Herzog makes no secret of the fact that he isn’t interested in the usual subjects or in presenting them in usual ways and this is a great strength of his work. He does actually provide a fresh perspective on the world around us and the people in it. His interviews are fascinating, not because they’re especially polished, but because he is so interested in odd things. This pervasive odd-ness tends to provoke unexpected reactions and tends to reveal a different kind of truth to most documentaries.

This approach was especially well suited to the topic of Antarctica and the people who live and work there. Herzog casts a wide net in this film and the audience is better off for it. We get to meet the folks who drive the heavy equipment, the catering staff, the people growing food and all other sorts along with the research scientists that we most commonly associate with the continent.

The documentary focuses specifically on why these people would come to Antarctica and what they get from being there. In the course of answering these questions we learn interesting things about Antarctica, the work being conducted there, and the kinds of people who find community in this extreme environment.

While Herzog’s particular style is uniquely suited to this topic, I personally feel that sometimes he steps a bit too far outside of the bounds of conventional documentary making. There were several points in this film where I got the sense that he was exploiting his subjects and was made uncomfortable by the way in which certain events appeared to have been staged. None of this substantively changed the content, message or value of the documentary, but for me it detracted from the quality.

Ultimately though, Encounters at the End of the World is a fresh and intriguing look at Antarctica and provides for a very pleasant experience.

~ by wrothful on June 8, 2008.