Writer Director Philipp Stölzl took home the 2009 German Film Critics Award for Best Screenplay along with co-writers Christoph Silber, Rupert Henning and Johannes Naber for this riveting adventure thriller. The setting is the deadly north face of the Eiger, still unconquered at the story’s setting in 1936.
Nazi propaganda urges young climbers to take on the nearly vertical ice covered rock massif in the name of the Aryan warrior spirit. Other Aryans watch from telescopes from the deck of the nearby hotel as the naïve gladiators battle the face and end up falling, freezing to death or hanging by their ropes until suffocated within view of the spectators.
Andreas and Toni are young volunteer soldiers in Hitler’s developing mountain strike force. They are supposed to spend their time learning how to fight and kill enemies in mountainous terrain. Instead they spend their time cleaning latrines because they are, well, goof offs. Of course as any good climber knows most of the best are goof offs. How else would they have time for the climbing?
Andreas is played by Florian Lukas (“Good Bye Lenin” 2003) and Toni by Benno Furman. These two climbers are confident they can make the climb; but then those who died before them were confident as well. They are not alone, a competing Austrian duo, better equipped, is right on their heels, spying on them and trying to take advantage of every trick the superior climbers divulge.
Just when the two are about ready to take the risk of their lives, in bursts Luise (Johanna Wokalek) an early love of Toni’s who relights the fire of romance on the frozen slopes of the Eiger. It is all the crack makeup crew can do to make the smashing Wokalek look ordinary. They succeed and she does look ordinary but a simmering screen chemistry boils between her and Benno Furman. It is a chemistry that will take her to the death dealing rock ledge with her lover to dare the worst of fates in a race to save her love.
Considering that most of the actors are wrapped in heavy clothing and frozen into ice cubes it is no wonder that the heavy lifting in this film is handled by cinematographer Kolja Brandt. Brandt pocketed the German Film Critics Award for Best Cinematography for this film and it is well deserved. Although one has to wonder where the cinematography leaves off and the production design of Udo Kramer takes over. The shots are made either on location or in a refrigerated set. The work is piercing in its realism and will keep all viewers with an ounce of adventure in their souls transfixed for the entire film. The tension never lets up from the start of the climb to the end.
The actors portraying the climbers are well coached in their craft and equipped with the best, safest and most realistic climbing gear. The equipment of the day was crude, consisting mostly of ropes, homemade pitons and hiking boots---very different from the fiberglass boots, synthetic ropes and tool steel crampons, ice axes and pitons that make up the modern climbing arsenal. The result is a close up climbing experience that is the best to date in terms of realism. A far cry from the armchair dabbling of Clint Eastwood in “The Eiger Sanction.” You can feel the icy cold numbing your arms and legs as you fight to escape the entrapment of the pitiless rock.
In the end it is Johanna Wokalek emerges as the hero of the film. The two climbers are soon bundled into so many layers of ragged insulation and made up with frostbite colored pancake that they can hardly be recognized. Indeed, many of the falls were probably done with dummies, as they could well have been fatal to even the strongest of humans. In what is reported to be a true story, Toni’s love Luise goes to suicidal lengths climbing out onto the tiny rock ledges to save the trapped duo. She braves impossible weather to urge the two men to hang on until help can arrive in the morning.
The sweeping original music score is by Christian Kolonovits who get a little carried away now and then, approaching Wagnerian heights with the crescendos. But in the end it seems a suitable backdrop for some earth shaking heroism. A must see for climbing fans and suitable viewing for the entire family (teenagers on up).
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