Encounters at the End of the World

Getting through the backlog is going to require more effort than I realised, especially if I keep watching new ones. So, to try and keep on top of the fresh ones here is Encounters at the End of the World.

I had a choice between two films courtesy of Love film. Encounters at the end of the world and Let the right one in. I've heard so many good things about let the right one in that I decided not to watch it because I was a bit tired and more importantly I thought my flatmates might appear two thirds of the way through and ruin the atmosphere.

Which doesn't say much about my expectations of Encounters at the End of the World. But I was right in the sense that it is sufficently episodic that an interruption halfway through wouldn't have changed much.

It's a great concept for a film. Herzog, that obsessive recorder of obsessives, has found his natural home. As one of those interviewed says, Antarctica is where those without anything holding them down drop to. Where those with a true wanderlust find themselves. There are people working there who have travelled between Peru and Ecuador in a sewage pipe (which was on the back of a lorry it turns out, which was a bit disappointing but still pretty good).

Herzog makes the not unreasonable guess that a place like this is going to be full of stories. That in the frontier like town some of humanity's most interesting specimans will be found. Having said that he doesn't seem that interested in them. He moans about the lack of charm in a settlement of prefabs and diggers. About a strictly run establishment where they have to do a two day survival course to be allowed out. There's one scene which shows the unlikely entertainment that occurs when this curious group let off steam but generally he can't wait to get out there. The settlement reeks of civilisation too much.

And he's right the truly magnificent parts of this film involve diving under the ice: The cosmic sounds of the seals, the extraordinary vista of a frozen ceiling to the sea and the descriptions and images of the creatures that live in the deep. There's an exhibition at the Natural History Museum which I'm desperate to see now before it ends. It's a truly magnificent world.

Add to that icebergs with so much water they could keep the River Jordan running for a 1000 years, 1 cell organisms which exhibit signs of intelligence, volcanoes which go straight down into the magma of the earth's core and penguins who run madly for the mountains far from the sea and their companions destined to drop down dead long before they get there, and you can see why he was desperate to get out there.

Given this I think he should have set it up more in two bits. First bit the humans who would think of coming to such a place. Second bit the place itself and why it endlessly fascinates those who have seen so much of the world already. It feels choppy, like he hasn't got a handle on what brings it together. Maybe there isn't anything. There is little that can connect it but without that it's possible to lose concentration even when you see all the things I've described. He's not helped by so many people who while theoretically fascinating are not actually engaging people- not surprising really, you don't travel to Antarctica to engage your easy charm.

I wish I'd seen it on the big screen and I long to see more images of the sea with the ice ceiling but I can't help feeling that somehow Herzog didn't know what to do with the extraordinary material he was sitting on.