Review: Encounters at the End of the World

Without mercy, Werner Herzog mocked himself in Zak Penn’s “Incident at Loch Ness,” a making-of take-off about the German filmmaker and a documentary crew chasing Scotland’s legendary denizen of the deep. Now Herzog does the real thing: “Encounters at the End of the World” is a transparent meta-travelogue about collecting exotica in Antarctica. For this G-rated essay for the Discovery Channel, Herzog embeds with likeminded “professional dreamers” doing chores and studies at McMurdo Station. A seven-week sojourn reveals debris, machinery and a tacky artificial ice-cream dispenser named Frosty Boy. As usual, Herzog is hungry for all that can disgust and intoxicate him. He spies the sublime above and below the ice. Seals emit signals that sound like those indecipherable signals from deep space heard in a sci-fi film. Herzog watches scientists watch a DVD of sci-fi film “Them!” He encounters an obliging geochronologist, glaciologist and others who sound as if they have seen a Werner Herzog film. Twice, though, our narrator interrupts the overlong tales of others. I winced when he asked a diver surfacing with three new species: “Is this a great moment?” Another overly italicized moment: Herzog implies his own peril with a third-hand story about a traveler to Guatemala who was macheted to death for taking a photo. Herzog’s surrealist misanthropy is best expressed in his inquiry into insanity among penguins. Does a closely packed colony ever drive a Herzog-like individual to make a mad existential dash into the void? As Sartre sort of said, “hell is other penguins.” 99m. (Bill Stamets)