February 2, 2009 -- Noted director Werner Herzog takes his camera on a whimsical journey around Antarctica in this interesting documentary filmed way down under at the end of the world. He gives us the usual images of cute penguins, nerdy scientists, cute seals (that make underwater sounds like the soundtrack for a science fiction film), yes, but he also interviews some very unusual people and shows us the underside of all that ice in some remarkable underwater shots. In a single dive during the film, scientists discover three new species. He also shows us an active volcano in Antarctica, including a journey inside the crater and inside a fumerole vent in the ice. Herzog's take on Antarctica is decidedly his own.

Herzog proclaims, for no particular reason, at one point that “the end of human life on this Earth is assured.” Herzog doesn't believe his journeys in Antarctica were adventurous. Adventure belonged to the age of Amundsen, Scott and Shackelton, he said (film from Shackelton's expedition is part of Herzog's movie and Herzog visits Shackelton's original hut, which has been preserved unchanged for 100 years). “Human adventure in its original sense lost its meaning,” when the last great unknown places on earth were visited, Herzog said. Has this guy heard of outer space? The last time I heard there were quite a few billion places in the universe that are unexplored.

Stefan Pashov, forklift driver and philosopher, said that Antarctica collects people who have the urge to “jump off the margins of the map.” This band of “professional dreamers,” these “part time workers and full time travelers,” tend to collect at the places where all the lines of the map converge, at the poles. Karen Joyce, a computer expert, talks of her travels across Africa in a garbage truck. Joyce seems to be one of many professional adventurers who end up in places like Antarctica if they don't get killed somewhere else first.

William Jirsa, linguist and computer expert, another of Herzog's chance encounters (in a greenhouse with ripe tomatoes, of all things), said, “If you take everybody who is not tied down they all sort of fall down to the bottom of the planet.” Jirsa was reportedly forced to destroy all his research on a native language because of crazy New Age ideologues in academia who were afraid of magic embedded in the language. Jirsa said he thinks 90 percent of the world's languages will be gone during his lifetime. In this film, the human element is not neglected at the expense of the nature, and these people are as fascinating and diverse as the rest of this far out landscape at the end of the world. This film rates a B.

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Copyright © 2009 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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