One of my earliest transcendent experiences in movies was watching Werner Herzog’s “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” for the first time. He has never quite equaled that achievement, in my opinion. But neither has anyone else. He’s one of the greatest living filmmakers, even though Abel Ferrara wants him to burn in hell. He seemed in a good mood when I talked to him on the phone about his new film, “Encounters at the End of the World.” And why not: it seems that after 40 years of making movies he’s finally getting some notice from audiences in America. PK: With Encounters at the End of the World, you’re the first filmmaker who’s shot on all seven continents. WH: [laughing] I have to stop you right there, because this is kind of embarrassing,[laughs]. I do not want to end up in the Guinness Book of World Records. PK: I see this was never a goal of yours. WH: No, no, of course not. But you see, there’s also something significant about it. Early in the film Encounters at the End of the World, there’s a fork – a caterpillar driver, and he comes from Bulgaria , and has graduated in philosophy and comparative literature, and he says something very beautiful. He talks about his childhood and how he started to venture out into the world. His grandmother read The Odyssey to him when he was a child, and about the Argonauts, and he said, “In my mind, I started to travel and explore, and in that moment I fell in love with the world.”And I thought, “My ...
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