As if to spite F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous observation (or at least to prove that it doesn’t apply to hardy Germanic sorts like him), Werner Herzog is happily enjoying his second act. Herzog made his reputation in the 1970s directing a series of films about obsessed lunatics starring Klaus Kinski (they worked together six times, which is six times as much as any other filmmaker employed Kinski). But Herzog’s heart has always been with documentaries that let him explore his favorite theme, which might be described as “Nature 1, Mankind 0.” And since Grizzly Man was a hit a few years ago, money has started seeking him out. Thus Encounters at the End of the World, a film Herzog was invited to make by the National Science Foundation. The primary setting is McMurdo Station, the nerve center of what little human activity there is on Antarctica. Accepting the invitation only after making clear to his hosts that “I would not come up with another film about penguins,” Herzog proclaims on arrival to be horrified by the place, which contains such “abominations” as “an aerobics studio, yoga classes and even an ATM machine.” Nonetheless, he manages to find a number of kindred souls among the thousand or so residents, people as compelled as he is to “jump off the margins of the map.” He has a talent for getting scientists to ramble on excitedly about their pet passions, like a physicist trying to describe neutrinos. (Turns out they’re not, as I would have guessed, those mini-donuts you get at Tim Horton’s, though exactly what they are kinda went over my head.) The match of location and director are perhaps too perfect, as if everyone assumed that simply putting Herzog and a camera in this fabulously remote place was all that was needed for a great film. But while he is happy to grouch on the soundtrack about the pitiless vastness of nature in the face of man’s insignificance, Herzog never really finds a central theme for this footage. Still, even lesser Herzog has its tart pleasures, like an encounter with a deranged penguin or a training exercise in which blinded scientists lose their way in a simulated snowstorm. And though Herzog himself can’t take credit for it, there is some astonishing footage of creatures that live under the ice that should be studied by special effects guys in need of inspiration for new movie monsters.

—m. faust