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intertribal
I never wrote a review for Encounters at the End of the World. There isn't really a whole lot to say except that it's a beautiful movie. I have always wanted to see Werner Herzog's work but this was my first. It came to the independent theater in Lincoln the weekend I left, so my mother and I saw the matinee show the day before my flight. I had wanted to see it for months - it came out in New York a long time ago, and I don't think I was in the city at the time - so it was real serendipity that it took so long to get to Lincoln. I think Discovery Channel is going to start playing it on television, but the effect would be almost totally lost. It needs a big screen, for the skillful, engulfing cinematography. Engulfing is a good word for it. The movie swallows you, takes you back into the Earth.
Encounters is a documentary about people (mostly scientists, with the odd philosopher-cum-construction-worker and banker-cum-snow-truck-driver, and a computer specialist who drove across Africa in reverse and traversed South America in a sewer pipe) who live and work in Antarctica, often on surprisingly large and slow-moving glaciers. They're a strange and endearing lot, intellectually curious loners who, as one linguist who now does Antarctic computer work after giving up trying to save a dying language put it, fall down to the bottom of the Earth and find happiness, or at least peace, in their work. Some of them are still mostly human: deep-sea divers who mine for new microscopic species and celebrate by holding their own outdoor rock concerts. The ones who deal with larger animals are further away from human civilization - biologists lie flat on their bellies on the glacial ice, listening to the seals who make totally alien and unfamiliar sounds underneath in the water, and walk out in the dark in silence, hearing only their own heartbeats and the sound of ice cracking around them, and of course the occasional loud thump from a subsurface seal; an animal behaviorist who doesn't talk to humans much anymore and lives alone watching his penguins.
The penguin part was one of two parts that I found very emotionally affecting. Herzog asks the penguin-man, trying to keep the conversation going, if penguins ever display sexually deviant behavior, tying it to homosexuality. The penguin-man says not really, although he has seen triangles with two males and one female. Then Herzog asks if any penguins go insane, if they ever decide they just cannot live in this flock anymore. The penguin-man says, well, he's never seen a penguin bash its head into a rock, but penguins do get disoriented. And then we watch a group of penguins in the middle of the ice - some head out to sea for food, and some go back to the other penguins, but there's one penguin that just stays put for a bit, as if confused - or thinking - and then starts heading straight for the inland, toward a mountain. Very vigorously. The rules are to not interfere with the penguins, to just let them be (and you see this penguin go waddling past the deep-sea divers, who watch it with amusement), and the penguin-man says that even if you chased after this penguin and brought it back to the flock, it would immediately start heading straight back for the mountain. It's very sad, because you know the penguin is essentially committing suicide (presumably without knowing it), and it's also very striking because of the similarity between this penguin and all the scientists and workers on Antarctica, these people that fell to the bottom of the Earth and are choosing to live in extremely harsh conditions.
My favorite part, however, concerned an atmospheric scientist who was sending some kind of special balloon into space to detect neutrinos. He was clearly very excited about the launch of this wispy little thing, and started talking about neutrinos like he was being interviewed for a regular National Geographic science program, all technical terms and such, and then suddenly it's like he breaks down that facade and starts likening the neutrino to a spiritual presence, to God - the kind of thing scientists aren't supposed to say, but clearly the reason he's devoted his life to the neutrino. It's a perfect wrap-up of the movie, that combination of science and philosophy and dreams and honesty. These people would certainly all subscribe to the Boom De Ah Dah view of the world (I totally fell in love with this commercial in Surabaya, when I was watching Air Crash Investigation - not a contradiction, in my mind - and it still brings tears to my eyes. Or as one YouTube user says, "it gets me stoked on life every time". Yeah, I'm a sucker). And it's these strange, disoriented, near-crazy people who really love the world, I mean the planet, who are stoked on life, and it makes you wonder if maybe they are because they live so far out of human civilization's bounds. The vulcanologists tried a few years ago to descend into an active volcano. They stopped when one of their team members was blasted with magma. He wasn't seriously injured and was laughing about it while lying on the ice having been pulled out of the crater.
So yeah. Stunning documentary about life on Earth.
Encounters is a documentary about people (mostly scientists, with the odd philosopher-cum-construction-worker and banker-cum-snow-truck-driver, and a computer specialist who drove across Africa in reverse and traversed South America in a sewer pipe) who live and work in Antarctica, often on surprisingly large and slow-moving glaciers. They're a strange and endearing lot, intellectually curious loners who, as one linguist who now does Antarctic computer work after giving up trying to save a dying language put it, fall down to the bottom of the Earth and find happiness, or at least peace, in their work. Some of them are still mostly human: deep-sea divers who mine for new microscopic species and celebrate by holding their own outdoor rock concerts. The ones who deal with larger animals are further away from human civilization - biologists lie flat on their bellies on the glacial ice, listening to the seals who make totally alien and unfamiliar sounds underneath in the water, and walk out in the dark in silence, hearing only their own heartbeats and the sound of ice cracking around them, and of course the occasional loud thump from a subsurface seal; an animal behaviorist who doesn't talk to humans much anymore and lives alone watching his penguins.
The penguin part was one of two parts that I found very emotionally affecting. Herzog asks the penguin-man, trying to keep the conversation going, if penguins ever display sexually deviant behavior, tying it to homosexuality. The penguin-man says not really, although he has seen triangles with two males and one female. Then Herzog asks if any penguins go insane, if they ever decide they just cannot live in this flock anymore. The penguin-man says, well, he's never seen a penguin bash its head into a rock, but penguins do get disoriented. And then we watch a group of penguins in the middle of the ice - some head out to sea for food, and some go back to the other penguins, but there's one penguin that just stays put for a bit, as if confused - or thinking - and then starts heading straight for the inland, toward a mountain. Very vigorously. The rules are to not interfere with the penguins, to just let them be (and you see this penguin go waddling past the deep-sea divers, who watch it with amusement), and the penguin-man says that even if you chased after this penguin and brought it back to the flock, it would immediately start heading straight back for the mountain. It's very sad, because you know the penguin is essentially committing suicide (presumably without knowing it), and it's also very striking because of the similarity between this penguin and all the scientists and workers on Antarctica, these people that fell to the bottom of the Earth and are choosing to live in extremely harsh conditions.
My favorite part, however, concerned an atmospheric scientist who was sending some kind of special balloon into space to detect neutrinos. He was clearly very excited about the launch of this wispy little thing, and started talking about neutrinos like he was being interviewed for a regular National Geographic science program, all technical terms and such, and then suddenly it's like he breaks down that facade and starts likening the neutrino to a spiritual presence, to God - the kind of thing scientists aren't supposed to say, but clearly the reason he's devoted his life to the neutrino. It's a perfect wrap-up of the movie, that combination of science and philosophy and dreams and honesty. These people would certainly all subscribe to the Boom De Ah Dah view of the world (I totally fell in love with this commercial in Surabaya, when I was watching Air Crash Investigation - not a contradiction, in my mind - and it still brings tears to my eyes. Or as one YouTube user says, "it gets me stoked on life every time". Yeah, I'm a sucker). And it's these strange, disoriented, near-crazy people who really love the world, I mean the planet, who are stoked on life, and it makes you wonder if maybe they are because they live so far out of human civilization's bounds. The vulcanologists tried a few years ago to descend into an active volcano. They stopped when one of their team members was blasted with magma. He wasn't seriously injured and was laughing about it while lying on the ice having been pulled out of the crater.
So yeah. Stunning documentary about life on Earth.
