Anyone familiar with the weird cinematic outlook of Werner Herzog will be familiar with the quirks and manners that make up his universe. At the beginning of this very fine documentary Herzog intones in his tuneless, teutonic accent that he warned his investors solemnly at the outset of this project – abut the people who live and work in Antartica – that they certainly should not expect another film about Penguins. Indeed. What is here though is what one casually expect from Herzog – a beautiful film about the natural world, interspersed with revealing interviews with people who can tolerate the cold, the isolation and the endless white at the 'end of the world'.
They are a fascinating collection and if they weren’t real Herzog may have cast them – all reveal a 'second sight'. That is, they can see beyond the endless white into the subtle streams of nature. Herzog discovers the back story’s of many of the interviewers – like a former man of high finance who found that in the Arctic there was more to life than money. Still, for all its Herzogian existential obsessions this is very much a typical film about nature, which is to say that moment to moment it throws up stunning images of snowscapes and animals"¦
Herzog still has the gift of making life strange. Some of the images here, like a shot of ice from below the surface is like an action painting of the New York school. There is also a striking theme in much of the images; men and women unrecognisable as individuals in their heavy arctic clothing lumbering and cowering against the power of the environment. In Herzog’s world, we’re lucky to be alive and luckier still to live with the ability to try and grapple with the impenetrable mysteries of existence.
