The film begins with a promise. As his plane descends towards the McMurdo Research Station, Herzog tells the audience point-blank: "I would not come up with another film about penguins". He had been invited to Antarctica by the National Science Foundation under its Artists and Writers Program, and he was determined to avoid the clichés of the genre. Instead of focusing on the landscape's pristine beauty, Herzog was obsessed with the people who choose to exist there—the "professional dreamers" and the "sundry eccentrics" who have fallen to the bottom of the planet.
Cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger captures images that feel biblical and absurd: divers swimming under 100 feet of ice with ethereal light filtering through; a seal carcass slowly being pulled into a volcanic fumarole; the maddening, endless white horizon. The famous scene of a penguin walking determinedly toward a mountain range 50 miles away—certain to die—is heartbreaking and hilarious, pure Herzog. Encounters at the End of the World
The film begins with a declaration. In his distinctive, Teutonic-accented voice-over, Herzog announces that he has come to Antarctica at the invitation of the National Science Foundation, but he has left no doubt: he would not make another film about penguins. This is a direct jab at the cute, cuddly, anthropomorphic nature documentaries that had become popular. Herzog’s questions about nature, he assures us, were different. The film begins with a promise