(2007) Writer/director Werner Herzog's documentary of Antarctica - by invitation of the National Science Foundation, during the nightless austral summer (October to February) in which he also takes part as a puckish narrator - explores above and below the icy continent, which is larger than the continental US yet precarious and fragile.

Musicians Henry Kaiser and David Lindley provided additional, eerie, out-of-this-world, original music to accompany the fantastic photographic images. (Kaiser produced, directed, photographed, and composed a lengthy, musical video of the underside of Antarctica, Under the Ice.)

Wish you were here? A scientist studying the enormous B-15 iceberg (containing a quantity of water "to run the Nile for 75 years"), gradually drifting northward, describes the frozen continent as a "dynamic living entity."

Frequent unexpected moments of hilarity punctuate the story. At McMurdo Camp newbies receive training on how to move about in a blizzard: to simulate white-out conditions, everyone dons what look like white trash baskets with cartoonish faces scrawled on the outside and holds onto a rope; a cascade of mistakes causes the entire group to drift off course from the outhouse.

Traversing the six-foot-thick ice across the Ross Sea, we arrive at a site where scientists are studying Weddell seals. Lying down and putting ears to the icy surface, we listen to the eerie underwater communications - "like Pink Floyd or something" - among seals.

Herzog interviews various people, "professional dreamers," employed at the camps: a plumber displays the unusual Aztec digits of his hands; a linguist on a continent without languages, taking care of a greenhouse, tells Herzog that within his life time possibly 90% of all the languages on the earth will vanish (perhaps three or four during their interview); a female computer specialist pours forth her various adventures around the world - rescued by drunken Russian pilots … seeing South America through the end of a sewer pipe in the bed of a truck ("Her story goes on forever"); a philosopher operating heavy equipment quotes from Alan Watts, expressing the view that we are witnesses of the universe's becoming conscious of its glory; two electric guitarist with frosted beards rock on at the end of the world. "Shine on you crazy diamond."

Biologist divers drop through a hole in the ice, tetherless, into a frigid (-2º C near the ice) liquid world of sci-fi creatures; a reflective Dr Sam Bowers on his last dive has the privilege of finding three new species of forminifera (single-celled protists with a shell). At another site a bore hole is enlarged with explosives before other divers, privileged priests, are permitted inside a cathedral of another space and time, researching the evolution of life from its earliest stages.

A balloon launch into the stratosphere belongs to the Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter (ATIC) project searching for neutrinos (particles that were dominant at the birth of the universe and essential for the creation of all other matter, that are everywhere yet making no contact as they pass through us, as if in some parallel universe) about which Dr Gorham, a physicist from the University of Hawaii, says he is "measuring the spirit world."

Scott (whose 1902 hut remains as he left it) and Amundsen's competition to be first to get to the South Pole was the end of discoveries; only trivial world records on the planet have taken place since.

Herzog takes us to a penguin colony at Cape Royds for an interview with Dr Ainley, a reclusive penguin expert ("I tried to keep the conversation going"). We watch as a small troupe of penguins march off toward the sea for food, except for one who becomes disoriented and heads inland "toward certain death" in the mountains.

From the rim of Mount Erebus scientists carefully observe a volatile lava lake; we are informed of proper etiquette in the event of an eruption. Chimneys of ice form around the volcano's fumaroles, one of which we explore (careful to avoid those with toxic gases).

Mementos have been left in the passage directly under the South Pole for when human beings are gone, to be found by extraterrestrials, if they ever discover our planet. Herzog the pessimist soliloquizes on the catastrophes of life, such as the dinosaurs: We will be next.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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