DVD Review: “Encounters at the End of the World”

Rating: 88 

William Jirsa, a linguist living on a continent without language, aptly describes the people who Werner Herzog follows in his nervy documentary, “Encounters at the End of the World.” He says of his fellow campers at Antarctica’s McMurdo Station, “If you take everybody who’s not tied down, they all sort of fall down to the bottom of the planet.” Herzog hates what he sees of McMurdo, a place that looks like a frozen mining camp with yoga and aerobics classes, but he’s fascinated by the untied people he finds there.

McMurdo is where residents train for whiteout conditions by walking with buckets on their heads, where scientists watch apocalyptic science fiction flicks for comfort, where researchers play guitars on top of the station when they find a frightening new sea creature under the ice. They listen to underwater sea lion calls that sound like Pink Floyd. They grow hydroponic tomatoes.