What a waste of my time!!!

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Werner Herzog joins a group of scientist on a plane from New Zealand to McMurdo Station in Antarctica. He interviews the bus driver, forklift driver, and various people in this strange lifestyle. They put a bucket on his head to simulate white-out conditions. He goes to film seals with researchers. The underwater world is otherworldly with the ethereal music. The clams swimming is eye-opening. This is not a penguin movie but there are still penguins in it with a penguin researcher. There is also a volcano with a volcanologist. Herzog is able to deliver the wonder of the place and the wonder of the people drawn to that place. It's a study of the location but also a study of humanity. It's a travelogue unlike most and from someone with a genuine curiosity.

This was a terrible documentary about a wonderful thing. The beauty and mystery of everything in the film is worthy of a much better filmmaker. In one sitting, he merges information about volcanos, neutrinos, and penguins. It's very disjointed. He excites us with philosophical questions, then switches the subject entirely. It's like a film school student was trying to make something edgy, but his professor never got to edit it before they published it. I had to mute the Gothic music he decided to play over the clips of diving under the iceberg. I wanted to feel the solemn silence that scientists must feel down there. I wanted to let my mind run where it may, but instead I kept having to think to myself "Why is there a man yodeling?" (his choice of soundtrack anytime anything of interest was on screen). When he was interviewing scientists who were talking about their passion, you could feel their excitement as they spoke. But Werner insisted on constantly panning in on them, taking away any hope of subtlety. He featured pointless interviews with bus drivers that I expected to have lead up to the reason why they had found themselves in Antarctica, but didn't. The whole time I thought it would eventually tie up together at the end, but that never happened and I was extremely disappointed with the entire thing.

To begin with, it is my belief that this is one of the few documentaries that not only presents you information but is there to teach you something without you even noticing the whole process of scientific explanations being delivered and philosophical ideas being expounded. It is interesting how naturally the documentary combines the 'place' with the 'people' even if in the first place it didn't seem natural to find such people in such a place. Moreover the life stories of the scientists and researchers are nevertheless fascinating giving you a introspection into the bizarre 'end of the world' and its profound meanings to them and to us.

Werner Herzog's 2008 documentary finds him in Antarctica where he meets the people who call the frozen continent their home. Herzog announces at the start that this will not be another film about fluffy penguins but will explore the dreams of the people working in this landscape. The entire film crew consisted of Herzog and Cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger who spent seven weeks on the continent, interviewing the people who live and work there.Shortly after arriving, Herzog is in full on grumpy mode as he is stuck in the largest settlement on the continent, McMurdo Island. He is shocked to discover that it looks like a dirty construction site, is criss-crossed by JCB diggers and has a bowling alley and an ATM. Herzog makes it clear that he wants to escape the confines of the settlement as soon as possible.Herzog meets many different people in his seven weeks on the continent. Some people, like a geologist Herzog meets sound like poets when describing Ice Burgs the size of countries while others are particularly annoying. A survival instructor being the most irritable person Herzog encounters. We meet an array of weird and wonderful characters from an ex banker turned bus driver to a woman with a beard and another woman who travelled through South America in a sewer pipe on the back of a lorry. Their stories and experiences are rife with philosophy and wonder.Herzog's ability to put into words what he sees is unrivaled and he sounds like a poet when he speaks. His accent along with the way he conveys himself are a joy to listen to. Herzog takes us into the mind of the people he meets and tries to understand why they are here, what bought them here and how they have adapted to their environment. Herzog also tires to get inside the mind of a suicidal penguin in a very funny but odd moving encounter.Towards the end of the film, Herzog focuses on the future of Antarctica and the future of us as a species; hypothesizing that when we are gone a race of alien archeologists will study our ruined cities and try to understand why we were in the Antarctic. While there they will uncover the only completely intact human settlement, preserved in the ice. It is a unique and vivid Herzogian vision.As with all Herzog documentaries, I felt that watching it on Blu-Ray on a large TV was sufficient. Herzog captures great beauty in Antarctica but is also unafraid of filming the uglier sides. To me, his documentary makes Antarctica feel a bit like Prague. It is incredibly beautiful but kind of spoiled by Americans. This is a charming documentary which goes further than the traditional wildlife documentaries you will have seen before and is a joy to watch.www.attheback.blogspot.com