A film maker who likes to pit the savage teeth of nature against the barbarisms of man, Herzog is also a curmudgeonly absurdist baffled as much by the inconsistencies of nature as the human animal. What makes a man so "deranged" as to undertake a journey to the Edge of the World? From the biologist, pensive on his last dive beneath the ice, to the man escaped from behind the Iron Curtain, backpack at the ready for any opportunity of freedom - there's an obviously spiritual answer. Herzog is a canny documentarian, asking the most insouciant questions to ellicit responses as unlikely counterpoints to his images, elevating both to breathtaking beauty and circus act. What, for instance, induces a fluffy penguin to commit certain suicide by conducting a similar jaunt towards some distant mountain range? While Herzog is often short with people who seem sure of their own ability to assess the unknowable, his lens is most generous with characters whose relationship to the dangerous frozen landscpae is much like his own - one of constant wonder and the "deranged" love of a moth for the flame.