Described by a friend as the anti-March of the Penguins, Encounters at the End of the World (2007) is remarkable and provocative. Herzog travels to the Antarctic to interview the people who choose to work and live on this inhospitable continent isolated from the rest of civilization. He declares from the outset that this is not going to be a film about penguins. And if they do come up, he continues, he has some very different questions. As a result, we learn about penguin prostitution and what happens when a penguin ‘goes insane.’ Apparently, the occasional penguin will just take off from the flock and embark on a solitary, unaccountable trek into the interior of the Antarctic. We see one penguin set off on such a journey. As his fellow penguins proceed to their feeding grounds, this penguin simply stops. Looking around as if considering his options, he turns and takes off in his own direction. Herzog then intersperses footage of this solo journey as the penguin marches across the vast, empty expanse of ice, very much to the beat his own obscure drummer. As he enters and crosses the base camp, humans step out of his path (in accordance with a rule against interfering with penguins) and watch as this penguin steadfastly continues on, as Herzog dryly narrates, … ‘to certain death.’
Herzog’s take is that anyone who ends up in the Antarctic must have an interesting story. And it appears he is right. From the physicist in search of the elusive neutrinos that ‘are everywhere and nowhere’ to the man studying a single iceberg to the taciturn penguin scientist, this movie is populated with curious, interesting characters. The juxtaposition of these engaging, very human stories against the austere, mute indifference of the brutally desolate and frozen landscape creates an evocative narrative counterpoint. The landscape and underwater (under ice) photography evoke a sense of other worldliness. In this vast, cold beauty, humanity is insignificant. The timescale of our reckoning shifts as we place the brief tenure of humans against the story told by ice thousands of feet deep and thousands of years old. This, in turn, nuances our experience of the individual stories told in the film.
Herzog makes it clear that this is not a movie about penguins. And yet, the penguin marching determinedly and unaccountably into the frozen depths of the Antarctic comes to feel like an organizing metaphor. While March of the Penguins anthropomorphizes these animals, making them comfortable, familiar and human-like in their own penguiny way, Herzog highlights the inexplicable. But as the image of that solitary penguin marching to certain death knocks around in memory, the senseless irrationality and absurdity of the endeavor begins to resonate until, maybe, we see something of ourselves in the penguin and his quest. Albert Camus would have loved this film, I am certain.
