LYT Review: NORTH FACE

Why aren’t there more thrillers made about mountain climbing? Really, it seems like a gimme – make anything happen on the side of a mountain, anything at all, and the fact that anyone at any time might fall to their deaths gives it a whole lot more weight. It won’t even need to be in 3-D to give the sensitive viewer vertigo...though a 3-D mountain movie is not a bad idea.

Oh, but wait: there are a couple of arguments against. All those DVDs of VERTICAL LIMIT you saw for months on end clogging up the used bins at Blockbuster. Stallone’s CLIFFHANGER. And MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2.

Let me take those down, one by one. VERTICAL LIMIT had great action sequences, despite a story that was dumb as a box of rocks. It worked great in theaters, but no-one needed to revisit it on the small screen, hence the hang-around. CLIFFHANGER utilizes the sense of height and vertigo most excellently in its opening sequence, then spends the rest of the movie inside caves and shit, ignoring the massive potential for falling scares. And M:I 2’s rock-climbing bit was so good, it was almost the entirety of the trailer, which lured a lot of people into seeing a movie they mostly decided they didn’t like the rest of afterwards (I still dig it, but can’t really defend it on a logic level).

All of which is preamble to the fact that the new German movie NORTH FACE, which opens today, doesn’t screw it up. One hates to be overly hyperbolic about a movie in February, but let’s just say I’ll be very impressed if a movie grips me with its tension as much as did this for the rest of the first quarter of 2010 (how’s that for an ad pullquote?). Also it has Nazis!

But only because the movie is set in Germany during the ‘30s, so really, they’re unavoidable.

If you’re asking yourself why I’m writing about a foreign-language period piece here, on this site, let me just take a moment and explain. I’ve been a professional movie critic since 1999, and in recent years, have established a reputation as something of a genre guy, a go-to reviewer for action, horror, comic-book stuff, etc. At my mainstream outlets, I bring the geek world to them. Here, maybe I can bring some different worlds to you. Which isn’t to say I won’t review TRANSFORMERS VERSUS ALIENS 3-D in this space should it ever be made (oh please!), but just so you know, I’m not one of those critics who doesn’t get where you’re coming from. I do...and I hope to justify some of these more obscure titles in a language we both understand, from time to time. (That’d be the language of binary load-lifters...very similar to your vaporators in most respects.)

NORTH FACE takes place in 1936, as Nazi Germany prepares to host the Olympic games that Leni Riefenstahl will become famous for filming, and Jesse Owens will own Aryan ass at. Needless to say, puffing up national pride is a huge priority, and one aspect of this involves the Eiger, a sheer face of rock in the Alps that has yet to be climbed successfully. “Eiger,” we learn about halfway through, is a name derived from “Ogre,” and so many have died in the attempt that Swiss authorities have posted signs insisting that it no longer be tried.

Back in Berlin, fat-cat newspaper editor Arau (Ulrich Tukur, who you’ll recognize if you’ve ever seen any German films: THE LIVES OF OTHERS, THE WHITE RIBBON, AMEN...stateside, he was in the remake of SOLARIS) is desperate for a triumphant mountain climbing story, lamenting the fact that “Die-hard climbers die easier than you think!” But it turns out his intern/secretary/something Luise (Johanna Wokalek) happens to know two insanely determined climbers from the small town where she grew up, a pair by the name of Toni (Benno Furmann) and Andi (Florian Lukas). Both are a part of the German army, but keep skipping out to go rock-climbing. Since Hitler hasn’t gone on his major invasion-spree just yet, it seems their conscription is not ironclad, and when a frustrated officer basically tells them it’s his way or the highway, they quit.

New camera and potential assignment now in hand, Luise hopes to chronicle Toni and Andi’s climb of the Eiger. But alas, Toni isn’t into it, citing the statistics of random avalanches and death. Andi is more determined (read: nuts), and it seems like both men may have romantic pasts with Luise (that this is never made overly explicit is one area where NORTH FACE handily trumps any Hollywood equivalent). So it looks like they may both let Luise down by bungling what would have been her first big scoop, and disappoint us by not giving us a movie. But you know neither of those things is gonna happen. Come on, now.

So, yep, all of that is set-up to the real meat of the movie: Andi and Toni go up the mountain. Hot on their tail are two Austrian climbers – the aptly named Angerer (Simon Schwarz) and Rainer (Georg Friedrich). Meanwhile, Arau and Luise watch from the lap of luxury below, at a fancy hotel equipped with telescopes.

Come to think of it, the idea that Arau and Luise get to stay in such a fancy hotel on a journalism expense account...why, this must be science fiction! Perfect for Geekweek! How times change. Anyhow, at the hotel, Arau argues with a similarly fat-cat Austrian about which country’s team will get to the top first...and how that may or may not ultimately reflect on whose country annexes whose in the years to come.

But these political undertones are only a sub-theme...what counts in this movie is dudes nearly falling off mountains, getting hit in the head with rocks, suffering frostbite, sleeping on the edges of ravines; y’know, the usual. And since none of them are all that familiar as actors – except Tukur, whose character stays safely out of harm’s way – you don’t know who will live or die. Unless you happen to be an expert on German mountain climbers of the ‘30s, this being based on a true story and all. But I’m gonna guess that you, dear reader, are probably not, and will endeavor to remain spoiler-free on this score, though you can probably Google it if the tension sounds like it might be unbearable.

Oh, here’s another thing that makes NORTH FACE particularly awesome: They shot it on the actual Eiger. Not everything – the actors merely had to scale a replica in an uncomfortably freezing warehouse, but all the wide shots with stunt doubles were on the real deal. In fact, here’s a video of one of them doing the Eiger just for fun: http://stephan-siegrist.ch/index.php?id=67(click on "View the trailer" when you get there)

If you’re not clenching your fingers and/or toes tightly by the time one of our heroes is hanging in the air, trying to untie the fibers of his safety rope using only his frostbitten fingers and chattering teeth, then you, sir or madam, have a constitution of ice, and could probably survive the Eiger climb unassisted. Me, I’ll enjoy the thrills from the safety of a movie theater.