Werner Herzog

NEW YORK — When Werner Herzog stood at the South Pole, he had the odd sensation of knowing every direction was north. Whichever way he stepped was a different time zone: 2 p.m. to the left, 3 a.m. to the right.

Likewise, Herzog has for decades been dipping into different times and different worlds. But the 65-year-old filmmaker doesn't merely tiptoe across borders, he leads film productions where they wouldn't normally go: the Peruvian rain forest, the Alaskan plains, the Laos jungle.

Herzog's latest expedition is to Antarctica for the new documentary "Encounters at the End of the World," for which he went seeking something besides, as he narrates, "fluffy penguins."

As ever, Herzog is interested in the meeting of man and nature. The 65-year-old German-born filmmaker documents the "ugly mining town" of McMurdo Station and the odd dreamers who have ended up at the bottom of the world.

Q: It's easy to characterize this film as you reaching some kind of end point. Do you agree?

A: What I mind is this kind of absurd race: who was going to be the first one on the South Pole. Culturally speaking, in my opinion, it ended all notion of human adventure. That was the end of it.

Q: You wouldn't characterize anything you've done as an adventure?

A: No, I'm a professional person. Adventure belongs to a different age. It died out in the early or mid-19th century, and that was a time where men would meet in pistol duels at dawn and where damsels would faint on a couch. That's a time where adventure was a legitimate thing. It's over now. Whoever declares himself an adventurer I find highly suspicious and I would not like to be friends with these people.

Q: The Guinness Book of Records seekers.

A: Yes. There's a man who will seriously attempt to hop into the South Pole on a pogo stick. It has become very absurd. Although as I have fallen in love with the world, I work in different countries and I have stories that take place in the jungle in Peru, in Alaska among grizzly bears — you just name it. In Australia with Aborigines.

Q: Someone in "Encounters" describes humans as a witness for the universe, which experiences its glory through our eyes and ears.

A: The man who says it is actually a Caterpillar (tractor) driver, but he's from Bulgaria and he studied philosophy and comparative literature. This man, in a way, sets the tone for the film. He says, "I fell in love with the world." And all of a sudden, it struck me: Yes, that's all that has carried me through all of my films. All of sudden, it's more clear than in any of my movies — this kind of falling in love with the world.

Q: Your friend the documentarian Errol Morris referred to your work as an "extended essay on the meaning of meaninglessness," a description that sounds humorless. But you and your films are often funny.

A: If you think I'm this kind of Teutonic, driven brooder, not so!