What does Wern­er Herzog’s nihilist pen­guin teach us about life?

The film is an inves­ti­ga­tion of a beau­ti­ful and bru­tal land­scape, a nat­ur­al world of extreme weath­er and unimag­in­able vio­lence. But first and fore­most it’s about peo­ple and how they inter­act with and inter­pret the harsh envi­ron­ment. Her­zog, a chron­ic wan­der­er him­self, meets a stream of fas­ci­nat­ing, often eccen­tric char­ac­ters gath­ered to form a work­ing com­mu­ni­ty in and around McMur­do Sta­tion, an Amer­i­can research cen­tre locat­ed on the south­ern tip of Antarctica’s Ross Island. He speaks, for exam­ple, to a glaciol­o­gist, a sur­vival school instruc­tor, a team of vol­ca­nol­o­gists, a util­i­ty mechan­ic and a mul­ti­ple world record hold­er. They all have their own intrigu­ing sto­ries to tell.

Inter­viewed in a green­house, ​“amongst unripe toma­toes”, an unsur­pris­ing­ly artic­u­late lin­guist explains that those who are not tied down tend to fall to the bot­tom of the plan­et. ​“We’re all at loose ends,” he says, ​“and here we are togeth­er.” It’s a nice metaphor.

It’s a decade since the film offi­cial­ly pre­miered at the 2007 Toron­to Film Fes­ti­val, and it remains one of Herzog’s finest achieve­ments. The film is crammed with com­plex and chal­leng­ing mate­r­i­al that calls into ques­tion every­thing we think we know about the term ​“doc­u­men­tary”. While the images of a total­ly alien, under­wa­ter world – filmed by col­lab­o­ra­tor Hen­ry Kaiser – inspire awe, and the dis­cus­sion with the afore­men­tioned util­i­ty mechan­ic makes for a pro­found­ly mov­ing exchange, there is one scene in par­tic­u­lar that war­rants close atten­tion: that con­cern­ing pen­guins prone to exis­ten­tial crises.

Ear­ly on in the film, Her­zog assures us that he is not inter­est­ed in mak­ing a film about pen­guins and, as he intro­duces the colony at Cape Royds, he explains: ​“Every­one spoke about pen­guins, how­ev­er, the ques­tions I had were not so eas­i­ly answered.” As such, we should expect some­thing out of the ordi­nary. The man tasked with field­ing the exam­i­na­tion is marine ecol­o­gist Dr David Ain­ley, who is described as ​“a tac­i­turn man who in his soli­tude was not much into con­ver­sa­tion with humans any­more”. This must, of course, be tak­en with a pinch of salt.

Ain­ley begins with a brief his­to­ry of the spot and a sum­ma­tion of how the colony is far­ing, explain­ing that the pen­guins have had a good win­ter, they have claimed their ter­ri­to­ries and the females have left the males to tend the eggs. There’s a brief pause, per­haps a hint of awk­ward­ness, and Her­zog works to keep the con­ver­sa­tion going. First, he asks about the pen­guins’ sex­u­al behav­iour, hear­ing about tri­an­gu­lar rela­tion­ships and ​“pros­ti­tu­tion” in response, before mov­ing on to the crux of his inquiry: ​“Dr Ain­ley, is there such thing as insan­i­ty among pen­guins? I try to avoid a def­i­n­i­tion of insan­i­ty or derange­ment… but could they just go crazy because they have had enough of their colony?”

The expert reflects on nev­er hav­ing seen a pen­guin ​“bash­ing its head against a rock”, but he goes on to describe how they do get dis­ori­ent­ed and ​“end up in places they shouldn’t be, a long way from the ocean.” Cue a moment of vin­tage Her­zog. The soft, angel­ic tones of Alexan­der Sedov’s ren­di­tion of ​‘Retche Gos­pod Gospode­vi Moye­mu’ slow­ly rise and the cam­era pans above a group of pen­guins shuf­fling over a large sheet of ice, with a range of colos­sal peaks loom­ing behind. The direc­tor nar­rates in his cus­tom­ary tongue-in-cheek poet­ic style (it’s as if he can’t resist mock­ing his own philo­soph­i­cal incli­na­tions): ​“One of them caught our eye – the one in the centre.”

Her­zog pro­ceeds to explain that the pen­guin will not go to the feed­ing grounds at the edge of the ice, nor will he return to the colony; instead he heads straight for the moun­tains, ​“some 70 kilo­me­tres away”. Catch­ing him and bring­ing him back will make no dif­fer­ence – he’ll sim­ply turn around and head again for the inte­ri­or. ​“But why?” Her­zog asks. We then see footage of anoth­er of these ​“deranged” pen­guins, 80 kilo­me­tres off course, slid­ing on its bel­ly towards cer­tain death. These shots of the soli­tary birds march­ing to their demise, mere black dots against the white expanse, are per­fect in their por­tray­al of lone­li­ness and desolation.

The scene, then, is a splen­did tragi­com­e­dy, serv­ing as a sour anti­dote to the fluffy charm of films like the The March of the Pen­guins, which arrived two years ear­li­er. It’s a play with­in a play; mas­ter­ful­ly con­struct­ed, it deliv­ers a hefty emo­tion­al blow. It’s in this con­struc­tion, and self-reflex­ive style, that truth and rev­e­la­tion can be found – Herzog’s ecsta­t­ic truth, that is. The nat­ur­al world, as we learnt from the hor­rors of Griz­zly Man, is not eas­i­ly com­pared with ours. The struc­tures we adopt for our sto­ries – be they trag­ic, roman­tic or comedic – do not fit nature quite so tight­ly, and Her­zog knows this. Any facts about the pen­guins’ moti­va­tions and thought process­es remain unob­tain­able. We view the nar­ra­tive as the film­mak­er builds it: through an exclu­sive­ly human lens.

In his 1999 Min­neso­ta Dec­la­ra­tion, Her­zog queried the valid­i­ty of the ​“doc­u­men­tary” label. He drew dis­tinc­tions between the super­fi­cial ​“truth of accoun­tants” and the ​“deep­er stra­ta of truth in cin­e­ma”, which is ​“mys­te­ri­ous and elu­sive, and can be reached only through fab­ri­ca­tion and imag­i­na­tion and styl­i­sa­tion”. Let’s not for­get that he once called Fitz­car­ral­do his great­est doc­u­men­tary. Essen­tial­ly, Encoun­ters at the End of the World is a film about us, not pen­guins. The truth is in our response to the sub­ject mat­ter – what it tells us about our­selves and about cin­e­ma. It’s cer­tain­ly a sequence worth pondering.