Werner Herzog and Antarctica. I mean, come on, what else do you need to know to know that you need to see this film? Instead of just talking about the environment and the various creatures, Werner does what he does best and focuses in on the people who work in this remote land...and what a weird bunch they are! I'll let you discover them for yourself.The film opens with Werner and his longtime cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger in a cargo plane landing in Antarctica on a frozen bay that's big as fuck and covered in like 8 feet of ice! Next they arrive at the research station and Werner is disappointed in how depressing it looks so after attending a survival school they ventures out to met some of the scientists at some of the more remote substations including some divers, a guy who wears tweed, seal researchers, an awesome volcano and a penguin scientist. The penguin part was the saddest because while they're filming a lone penguin starts walking off in the wrong direction (towards the interior of the continent, not the ocean!) and the science guy says that sometime a penguin will do that and if he returns it to the group it'll just turn around and walk off again to certain death. I found that to be very depressing and I really, really wanted to see where that penguin was walking to with such certainty as fast as his little penguin feet would take him. Poor little guy.
If you've seen any other of Herzog's wonderful documentaries then you know how talented he is at capturing the small little unique moments that make life so wonderful and EATEOFW is no different. It's a magnificent film and 99 minutes is nowhere near long enough. It could've easily been 5 times that and I would have still begged for more.
Highly recommended.
