North Face

[3.0
stars] [IMDb Link]

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In German, with English subtitles. No spoilers, but it ain't the feelgood movie of the year. It's based on historical events, and if you know your Alpine mountaineering history, you already know how it comes out.

In the mid-1930s, mountaineering teams are eager to climb the Eiger via the extremely difficult "north face". Don't ask me why: the Eiger isn't even close to being the tallest mountain in Europe, or even in Switzerland. And the summit had been reached decades before, from the west. Nevertheless, …

Two two-man teams set out on the attempt: one German (Toni and Andreas), one Austrian (Edi and Willy). Watching from the luxurious hotel in the valley below is Luise, a photographer who happens to be Toni's ex-girlfriend, and her boss Henry, a journalist hoping for either glorious triumph or heart-rending tragedy, not really caring which.

To call the attempt ill-fated would be an understatement. But the movie does a fine job of showing (and, in some cases, guessing) what happened; a few things are dinked for dramatic effect. The weirdest thing (for me) was absolutely true, however: a train tunnel went up inside the Eiger (and still does); you could ride in relative comfort up to a spot where, only a few meters away, the climbers faced deadly peril.

Consumer note: you'll note the swastika on the DVD box over there on the right (no, your right). The Nazi stuff is pretty minimal, other than some indication that having a German team be first up the north face would further pump up that old Deutschland Über Alles spirit we all loved back in the 1930s.


Last Modified 2024-01-30 1:17 PM EDT