But it is the other Everest film released that year, Sherpa, that delivers a better depiction of the tensions and dangers on the mountain today.
Everest, featuring Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Brolin, and Keira Knightley, is a dramatization of the infamous 1996 tragedy documented in Jon Krakauer’s iconic book Into Thin Air. Mount Everest was the stage for two major films released in 2015. The political subplots involving the Nazi regime’s ambitions around the first ascent of the Eiger’s “Murder Wall” slow the film down some, but hang in there-with all due respect to Herr Kurz-for some thrilling climbing drama. This subtitled German-language film veers from some of the historical facts but hews closely to the most haunting details from the tragedy, including a depiction of poor, doomed Kurz dangling for an eternity with thousands of feet of air beneath him, yet too far away from the mountainside to get himself back onto firm ground. North Face ( Nordwand, as it’s titled in German) dramatizes one of these horrific failures: the 1936 disaster in which Andreas Hinterstoisser, Toni Kurz, Willy Angerer, and Edi Rainer all perished. It gained its fearsome reputation after various attempts resulted in climbers dying in horrible and gruesome ways.
Watch them, quote them, be inspired by them, and, as Anderl Meier of The Eiger Sanction says, together “we shall continue with style.” Here are the 20 best climbing films ever.Ĭlimbing the North Face of the Eiger in the Swiss Alps was one of the first “last great problems” of mountaineering. They are mandatory viewing for anyone who calls themselves a climber. Whether the below films are all “great” by today’s standards is beside the point-though great they all are in their own ways. The trajectory of the climbing-film canon tracks right alongside the progression of the sport itself-from the speed-metal-fueled flicks of the early nineties, to Hollywood’s extravagant mountaineering hyperboles of the 2000s, to the recent gripping vérité films showing the world’s best athletes laying their actual lives on the line. Sure enough, a bunch of climbers, who once were only recognized at dusty Camp 4 picnic tables in Yosemite Valley, strutted up onto that rarified stage. Not so long ago, the headline “Dirtbag Rock Climbers Walk Down the Red Carpet to Accept Their Academy Award” would have seemed like an oxymoron-a violation of the very laws of nature.īut in 2019 it happened: light stopped being the fastest thing in the universe, up became down, and a little rock-climbing film called Free Solo won the Best Documentary Oscar.
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