Encounters at the End of the World

Werner Herzog is becoming my new hero. (As an aside, the trivia in his bio on IMDB is fascinating!)

Grizzly Man was weird and funny and tragic. He showed up in Mister Lonely for a bizarre small role, and now this.

Herzog sets out with his camera to find out about the people who go to Antarctica to work...it turns out there is some kind of weirdo magnet down there and pretty much all he had to do was turn the camera on and let it roll, but the results are stunning and not without the wonderful Herzog charm, brought to you in long still shots, hilarious overdubs and scenes of scientists laying face-down on the ice listening to seals.

From fork-lift driving philosophers to electric guitar playing scientists to a man who keeps a backpack packed at all times with everything he would need to pick up and go - including a kayak(!), the motley crew he encounters at the end of the world is quite entertaining, but the film is much more than that. It is gorgeous and sad and good in that way that keeps coming back to you for days after you've watched it.

The Wackness

I want to put on the record that this is the first movie we saw after Tilia was born.

It made me feel old.

Nothing more than a teen love story where the guy gets his heart broken, but the twist is that he sells pot out of an ice cream trolley. A lot of pot. And they show him having sex...imagine that in Ferris Bueller or The Breakfast Club.

My oh my how times have changed.

And yet, they haven't -- this, like the John Hughes movies of my time, was very conscious of its tragically hip self and as such shouldn't be expected to be any more than a Pretty in Pink for the Y Generation as they graduate from high school.

The main character's teacher (following the Hughes narrative again, all Hughes movies also had a wise teacher character) is played by Ben Kingsley who was amazing. He can play any character in the world masterfully. He made/saved this movie for me.

Speaking of Ferris Bueller -- Josh Peck who plays the main character kept looking so much like Alan Ruck who played Cameron in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, that I was convinced it was his son! Figuring out that that was possible made me really start feeling old. A quick IMDB search proved that they don't look anything like each other -- age takes its toll on the mind.