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Like Errol Morris, Werner Herzog addresses the fringe elements of humanity and the world in his documentaries. Within he finds universal human experiences, only displayed in the extreme. Inspired by the gorgeous underwater photography taken in Antarctica, he wondered, “what kind of people live at the end of the world?” His encounters with these sometimes-strange worldly people are what make his latest documentary fascinating. The visuals make the experience ethereal.

Herzog, in his distinct German accent, narrates his examination of this remote harsh environment. He states right from the start that his interest with the icy continent isn’t in fluffy penguins. That said, fluffy penguins do make an appearance, but Herzog is more interested in the solemn man who has spent 20 years observing them, asking the scientist if there are any gay penguins and whether penguins go crazy. We then watch as a rogue penguin inexplicably heading off toward the mountains on a crash course with certain death. Herzog informs us that the scientists could catch the penguin and bring it back to the group, but it would just head right back toward the mountain.

While he never says it outright, Herzog’s tone implies that one might be a bit mad to live in a place that for half the year is light all day and half the year is dark all day with temperatures that drop to minus 70 in the summer. Upon arriving in Antarctica, everyone must take a two-day survival course in order to be allowed to leave the safety of McMurdo Station, which is the largest “town” in Antarctica, funded by the National Science Foundation and run by a military contractor. Visitors must make and stay overnight in their own igloo. In whiteout training, hapless visitors wonder around aimlessly with buckets on their heads trying to orient themselves within space.

Herzog talks with laborers and scientists. A Russian man gets choked up about his escape from the Iron Curtain and can’t talk about it, but his impressive “ready to go” backpack says volumes about the paranoid readiness that his experiences there created. One resident speaks of her many adventures in war torn lands not knowing if she would live or die. In one of the bars, she performs a contortionist act where she stuffs herself in a dufflebag. A young linguist seems like a strange resident in a greenhouse located in a frozen barren land. With his impressive soul patch, he reminds us of a tree hugger, but his work shows us the hypocrisy in what we protect and what we let die. The scientists there are doing fascinating work, collecting more and more evidence about the origins of life on Earth. A sci-fi loving scientist studies a tree-like single-celled organism that challenges some scholars’ notion of intelligence. Another studies mystery particles that pass through all matter like they exist in another parallel universe.

These interesting characters fit this strange and beautiful world. Some of the underwater creatures look like they’re from an alien planet. The caverns of ice and snow are like cathedrals to nature. But when Herzog touches on climate change, the title takes on a duel meaning. Icebergs the size of North America are breaking apart and floating north. Many of the scientists in Antarctica now are there doing important work in the area of global warming, but is anyone listening to these crazy men and women living at the South Pole? Herzog frames the famed Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton’s expedition as simply a last-ditched conquest in a world with little left to conquer. Nothing more than being the first person to bounce the longest on a pogostick. But especially in America, we are obsessed with conquers and records and lists. So who is really crazy, those that travel to the end of the world to find truth, or those who live in the “real” world comforting themselves with the convenience of warm lies?

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