FALLING OFF THE MAP

What do you think of if you reach a place, beyond which there is nowhere to go? You would have reached the end of the world. Literally and figuratively Werner Herzog travels to such a place in his documentary Encounters at the end of the World.

Herzog lands in Antartica, and spends time with the people living there from physicists, zoologists and lorry drivers to travellers and lost souls. A young fella in an ice-cream vendors attire, squeezes out a vanilla cone while he is credited below as being a "Filmmaker, Computer Expert". These are your professional dreamers at the end of the world.

"Where else do you find guys with Phds doing the dishes, or linguists on the one place on earth where there is no native language."

You find them in a Herzog Film.

Herzog talks to a zoologist, an expert in Penguins about certain mysteries regarding the mammal. The zoologist has spent his whole life studying the life of Penguins, so much so that he has little to talk about to humans. And it is so evident while Herzog makes conversation with him. It makes you laugh, and yet it filled me with a strange kind of sympathetic joy. Herzog's question: "Can Penguins be driven by insanity?" The answer comes in the form of some amazing footage of a lone Penguin adventurer.

There's a deep sea diver who is certain about the end of the human race and loves to show doomsday B-movies to his colleagues.

And the jellyfish are hauntingly psychedelic.

What captures my feelings for this film, is when a female scientist studying seals says, "I can't describe the sounds of the seals below me, below the frozen sea we are on. I don't know, It's Pink Floyd."

Antartica can very well be a space station. It could even be the Moon.

I'm off the Map.