Product Description

Welcome to antarctica - like youve never experienced it. Youve seen the extraordinary marine life the retreating glaciers and of course the penguins but leave it to award winning iconoclastic filmmaker werner herzog to be the first to explore the south poles most fascinating inhabitants..Humans. Studio: Image Entertainment Release Date: 11/18/2008 Run time: 101 minutes Rating: G

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7192 in DVD
• Brand: IMAGE ENT.
• Released on: 2008-11-18
• Rating: G (General Audience)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 99 minutes

Features

• In the most hostile, barren, alien environment on the planet - you meet the most interesting people. Welcome to Antarctica - like you've never experienced it. You've seen the extraordinary marine life, the retreating glaciers and, of course, the penguins, but leave it to award-winning, iconoclastic filmmaker Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man, Rescue Dawn) to be the first to explore the South P

Amazon.com
Just about anywhere Werner Herzog goes becomes an interesting place, in part because the director shapes it with his distinctively sardonic eye. In Encounters at the End of the World, the 'Zog heads off to Antarctica, finding there a population of unusual people, hallucinatory underwater life, and penguins. He doesn't appear on camera, but the unmistakably Teutonic Herzog voice is very much with us all the time, a baleful tour guide for this blank destination. In the human outposts of Antarctica, Herzog finds the kind of people you might expect would gravitate to the edge of existence--the curious, the oddball, the wanderers who've run out of other places to explore. He finds some deadpan hilarity, especially in filming a communication drill involving people practicing blizzard conditions (they wear buckets over their heads while roped together). The underwater photography (a realm previously explored in Herzog's The Wild Blue Yonder) is by Henry Kaiser, and it meshes perfectly with the director's interest in alien eye-scapes. And when Herzog finally does find penguins, his imagination goes to the idea that some penguins go insane, scurrying off into their own suicidal directions. This isn't as arresting a film as Grizzly Man, but it is an entertaining travelogue spiked with quirky observations. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

A Masterpiece
There are movies, there are directors, and then there are masterpieces and masterful directors. Encounters is a true masterpiece, especially taken within the body of Herzog's work. This is a documentary first, much like Grizzly Man. Grizzly Man

The film in Antarctica itself is goregous. There is a subtle construction by Herzog that feels at first like a random documentary, but then builds over time to something much more than simply another film about "cute penguins", or planet earth. There is a below the ice and above the ice aspect to this film, physically and about the people. I loved the music, it fits so perfectly with the rythmn. The filming is done extremely well.

Early in the film Herzog promises to not make another film about cute penguins, and he certainly delivers. Although there is a short sequence about a cute penguin, lost walking the wrong direction with such determination to his certain death.

The bonus features in this DVD package are incredible. Aside from the extra footage under the water and flying in a helicopter, there is a second disc. The second disc is almost worth the price of admission, Johnathan Demme (director of Silence of the Lambs) interviews Werner Herzog for an hour and a half. The conversation is incredible. Demme opens the conversation reading a letter from Roger Ebert to Herzog(this film is dedicated to Roger). Suffice it to say, there is nothing I can possibly add to the full conversation. You will have to watch this amazing exchange.

Herzog apparently is highly influenced by music and sound. There is a fairly significant thread through this film dealing with both. Within two days I have watched two films where sound played a very major role or was another character in the film. I can very highly recommend Fraulein. If you love film, I think you will find Fraulein equally engaging.

great dvd extras
What the current Amazon listing does not explicitly mention is the wealth of DVD EXTRAS that accompany the 100 minute feature in this 2-DVD set.

ABOVE THE ICE
BELOW THE ICE
SEALS & MEN
DIVE LOCKER INTERVIEW
SOUTH POLE EXORCISM
JONATHAN DEMME INTERVIEWS WERNER HERZOG

+ a hidden "Easter Egg" extra: SEAL MEN, an Antarctic Parody of Herzog's GRIZZLY MAN, with weddell seals replacing grizzly bears

all and all this is over 3 hours of EXTRAS!

A haphazard film that never fully develops
Since other reviewers have adequately summarized this film, I'll skip straight to what I thought were the best and worst qualities of "Encounters":

BEST:

- The filming itself is brilliant, as you'd expect from Herzog. The contrast beetween the spellbinding landscape and the banal living quarters of its inhabitants is striking.

- The interviews provide terrific insight into the passion and curiousity that is necessary to subject oneself to living, even temporarily, in the most inhospitable land on the planet.

- The footage of the Antarctic Ocean floor is truly otherwordly. The creatures beneath the "frozen sky" are beyond even the most imaginative science fiction writers.

- There are approximately three hours of extra footage contained in the extra features on disc one and disc two, including segments of footage taken above and below the frozen surface. There is also a 90 minute interview of Werner Herzog conducted by acclaimed director Jonathan Demme, which is very interesting and, for me, worth the price of admission.

WORST:

- The film's interviews are often laden with scientific jargon that I suspect will alienate a general audience. I found the content of the interviews fascinating, albeit completely over my head.

- As other reviewers have noted, the interviews with the so-called "commoners" that were not in Antarctica for scientific study were too short. I felt that insufficient time was spent on telling their stories.

- While many of Herzog's observations and contemplations are fascinating, they never seem to connect to a larger theme or thesis. This lack of intellectual focus makes the landscape itself the focus of the film, and ultimately overwhelms Herzog's encounters that gave this film its name. I believe Herzog's intent was for these encounters to leave an impression on his audience, but it failed to do so for me. Perhaps if the contents of the interviews had built off of one another and arrived at a larger lesson or thought, something other than the landscape shots would have stuck with me.

Overall, I found the film to be inexcusably unfocused, leaving little else other than the setting to be admired. Herzog has done better than this. I call this film surreal, rather than poignant, as so many of his films have been. In any case, I have high hopes for his next project.