Director: Werner Herzog

Cast: Ryan Andrew Evans, Werner Herzog

The Buzz: Nominated in the Best Documentary category

The Run: Werner Herzog’s name

Encounters at the End of the World

The Grand Inquisition

If there is only one film from 2008 you are allowed to see, it better be Encounters at the End of the World. Not because it is easily the best movie made that year, but because it is so deep in its ideas, so uncompromising in its execution and so shattering in its discoveries. Werner Herzog has been making films for years and his filmography is probably the definitive stop to learn how profound documentaries can be.

As with most of Herzog’s films, Encounters at the end of the world is not just satisfied with the content it gives us. Herzog examines how the film is so important to him as a filmmaker and us as citizens of the earth. But by no way is this a didactic documentary about the “ecocalypse” nor is it about bonding between “fluffy penguins”. Herzog takes up a theme that has always fascinated him – about the nature of nature and the inherent savagery it exhibits. Why is it that some creatures are meant to be slaves and some masters? Why do some beings digress from the rest of their species? Why can’t man leave some part of nature unexplored or mysterious? Is nature like the Schrödinger’s cat that changes when observed? Through a multi-layered approach, Herzog studies how life goes on in the arcane world of Antarctica. There is considerable humour involved when we discover the stories behind the very many faces that have arrived at this edge of the planet. All this only questions us about how much we know about ourselves while we are studying the intelligence of single-celled organisms. “Hearing the universe’s cosmic harmonies through our ears and witnessing the universe’s glory through our eyes” answers one of them.

Encounters is a special film for me as I saw it amidst a Herzog retrospective. The most relentless filmmaker of our times after Godard, Herzog is the best example of how independent a filmmaker can be. Over 60 now, Herzog is everything a traveler, an artist, an adventurer or a roadie could ever hope to be. And Encounters is a gem with the master at the top of his game, as ever.