The Best Travel Movie Of The Turn Of The Century?

. . . Okay, perhaps not the finest, but it is got to be at least in the prime five or so. Possessing watched Warner Herzog’s “Encounters at the End of the World” for the 1st time last evening, I was astounded by the reality that such a very simple premise — hang out in Antarctica for a couple of weeks and film it — could turn out to be such a soul-browsing, eye-opening experience. Probably what was so surprising was that it is not so substantially the knowledge of becoming there, but rather the people who end up there (is not that usually the case?), most of whom place our own travel histories to shame.

From the Russian maintenance worker who keeps a 20-kilo bag at his side at all time, complete with essential gear for travel on a moment’s notice, to the bus-driving banker who discovered Quechua and volunteered in Central America for various years, the moon-base like outpost is residence to a enormous population of travelers who look to have nowhere left to go.

As one resident point out: “[Antarctica] a logical place to obtain each other due to the fact this place functions nearly as a all-natural selection for people that have this intention to jump off the margin of the map and we all meet right here – where the lines of the map converge.”

Obtaining the point? Type of sounds like that far-flung hostel you stayed in, populated by travel junkies and general vagabonds from about the planet.

The above clip sort of sums up the entire flick. Immediately after an anemic conversation with a penguin researcher, Herzog starts asking him seemingly random concerns (such as whether or not there are any gay penguins). Right after becoming asked regardless of whether penguins go crazy, Herzog and his crew encounter a group of penguins heading back to the sea from their nesting grounds. Following watching them for a bit, they notice 1 of the penguins has broken off from the crowd and lit out on his own into the 5,000-kilometer expanse of the continent, away from his comrades. Inquiring irrespective of whether such a penguin could be turned about and shown back to the path with the rest of the colony, Herzog learns that such efforts would be futile. “Even if you caught him and brought him back to the colony, he’d straight away turn correct back for the mountains.”