Herzog makes it seem so simple. Go someplace remote, turn on the camera, narrate it in that unmistakable voice and ba-boom, it’s another film on the shelf. It isn’t that way, of course. On the very surface, Herzog’s documentary canon may seem plotless, but there is a sense of exploration and fascination in his films that no one has ever had before or will likely have after he is gone.
This one is more Fata Morgana than Wild Blue Yonder in that it is very much about trying to know a place. The place in question is Antarctica. The star of the show is not nature, but the people who are drawn to this extremity. In fact, this might be Herzog’s most Errol Morris-like picture to date.
There are so many wonderful moments: the bucket-headed students in survival school, the non-conformist penguin rushing off to his destiny and death, the alien creatures at the bottom of a frozen sea, the celebratory guitar feedback jam at the discovery of a new species of single-cell organism, the woman who hides in a carry on bag, the man who talks about dead languages at 1 AM near the hydroponic tomatoes, the seals who make undersea noises “like Pink Floyd” ……on and on.
There’s a moment when we realize that the science station in Antarctica isn’t like an outpost on some distant world – it really is that. And it isn’t beautiful like EPCOT Center or Deep Space Nine. It is a place with dirt, noise, ice cream machines and power adapters with cords all over the place just like your desk. These are the times of miracles and wonders.
Keyword search for Herzog on this blog yields lots of goodies.
