North Face is a German movie about the push to get to the top of the Eiger mountain by means of the northern side, the hardest climb in the Alps. The film takes place in 1935 after the Nazis are already in control of Germany. Some mysterious group of people, some mix of Nazis and journalists, decide that if a German team can summit the mountain before others, it will be a sign of Aryan might - especially ahead of the Berlin Olympics of 1936.
One duo, found by a Berlin newspaper, are two country boys who are amateur but accomplished hikers, who seem to be screwing around in some official capacity in the Nazi army. By the time they are convinced to go try the hike, there is another team of Austrians who are also making a go at it.
The two groups begin together and our German pair are clearly the more experienced and better team. At some point, the Austrians get into trouble that could foil the bids of both teams.
My main problem with this film is that it's really boring, it moves very slowly for an "action/adventure" film and there are too many characters with too silly sub-plots. I guess we're supposed to like the German guys because they're nice and friendly and don't seem to be Nazi party members. For a movie set in 1935 Germany (OK, Switzerland), Nazis are almost not present at all (the only real Nazi stand ins are the Austrians, who seem more interested in their Aryan heritage than the German guys.)
But there are layers and layers of ridiculous story lines and relationships. There is no need for a newspaper to be involved in this (even if it's historically true, I don't really care and it feels totally like an add-on to the story). What's worse, the main journalist is a young woman who is a childhood friend of the climbers. There are suggestions of a sexual affair between her and one of the guys, but this too goes nowhere. Then there's the woman's editor who makes untoward advances at her... as if I cared about her chastity in the first place.
All I really want is a story about two guys hiking up a mountain, and due to bad planning of others and bad weather, they had a hard time doing it. I didn't need all the other stuff. I mean don't show me Nazis and then suggest that a successful climb would be good for German propaganda and then do nothing with that (I mean I can't even get a single scene with Goebbels in it?! C'mon!).
Beyond this, the characters are really boring (I think that's actually part of the point. They're simple, boring guys who love climbing mountains. They are not political and don't care about the propaganda) and the technical parts of the film (the photography, music, editing) seem banal (even as beautiful as shooting in snow generally looks onscreen, this is just trite and unimpressive).
Director and co-writer Philipp Stölzl does a really lousy job of making me care at all about what is going on with the hike or the ridiculous sub-plot about the journalists off the mountain. It's basically a lot of snow and frostbite with some dull action scenes (that might have been shot on a sound-stage) and a mess of a story.
Stars: 1 of 4
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment