I've had some time to cogitate on ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD, and I appreciate it even more now than I did right after I saw it.
ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD begins with a jaw-droppingly beautiful shot of scuba divers under the Antarctic Ice, segues into a silly visual of a monkey riding on a goat, and gets us thinking with an interview with one of the many denizens of Antarctica's McMurdo Station. And the film just goes from there, weaving a tapestry of people, stories, projects, and visuals in its portrait of a little place at the end of the world where the smart, hardworking, and adventurous come to explore the world and mankind's potential.
In the process, it gives us a film that pushes all our buttons: it's beautiful, enlightening, and thought provoking, and it lingers in our consciousness long after the credits end. It makes me regret that I made my "Best of 2008" list before I saw it: this film would surely rank at #1.
