Encounters at the End of the World

As Herzog himself intones, there are no “fluffy penguins” in his film on Antarctica; rather, it explores the dreams and ecstatic realities of the people that have chosen to live in a realm far beyond the ordinary. Geologists, zoologists, divers, divers/guitarists (experimental musician Henry Kaiser!), and others chime in about life at the world’s end, where human civilization is but a blip amidst nature’s awe-inspiring vastness. “A portrait of people in search of the sublime” (Jerry White, Cinema Scope), Encounters “has the quality of a dream: it’s at once vivid and vague, easy to grasp and somehow beyond reach” (Manohla Dargis).