Those are the professional dreamers. They dream all the time.
No one makes nature documentaries like Werner Herzog. Anybody seeking proof of this need look no further than his most recent film, Encounters at the End of the World, which is about the various scientific studies going on in Antarctica and the eccentrics who carry them out. Written, directed and narrated by Herzog, whose films -- both fiction and nonfiction -- are frequently centered around obsessive and driven individuals (think Aguirre, the Wrath of God or Fitzcarraldo, Little Dieter Needs to Fly or Grizzly Man), Encounters opens with an admission by Herzog that he's not planning on making another documentary about "cute penguins." (In fact, when he finally gets around interviewing a scientist who is studying them, Herzog is more interested in finding out about the deranged penguins who wander away from the flock, almost certainly to their doom. His interview subject is somewhat taciturn, though, so he doesn't have much to say on the subject.) Instead, Herzog trains his camera on the seemingly ordinary people (one of whom is a plumber apparently descended from Aztec royalty) working at one of the continent's bases before heading on to the various scientific outposts.
Some of the most lyrical sequences come into the picture when Herzog visits with a group of biologists and divers (who include musician Henry Kaiser, who not only produced the film and co-wrote the score, but also shot the underwater footage). The scenes of the environment and the life forms that can be found underneath the ice are worth the price of admission in and of themselves. Herzog also spends time with scientists studying icebergs and seals, an active volcano (with a lava lake) and neutrinos. Even if his conclusions are pessimistic for the human race as a whole, one can't help but be awed by the kinds of people who would go to the edge of civilization to further our understanding of our world in which we live.