To The Limit (First Run Features DVD/2007)

 

Picture: B-     Sound: B-     Extras: C     Film: B-

 

 

To the Limit (2007), released in the US by First Run Features, is an extreme sports documentary from Germany.  It tells the true story of two Bavarian brothers, Thomas and Alexander Huber, who share a passion—or perhaps insanity—for mountain climbing.  They rank among the best climbers in the world and their goal is to break the speed record in climbing the 2,900 foot cliff of the El Capitan Mountain in Yosemite Valley.  The director is Pepe Danquart who won an Academy Award for his short film Schwarzfahrer in 1993 and whose career has since then been stuck at base camp, albeit by his own choosing.  Following his Oscar, Danquart could have gone to Hollywood and make a career as a commercial filmmaker, but he chose a different path, staying behind in Germany to direct groundbreaking documentaries such as Nach Saison (1997), an epic about the Bosnian war.  Limit ranks among his best work, working some narrative aspects into the documentary format, to various degrees of success.  It explores why a seemingly normal person would want to risk life and limb just to reach the top of a mountain. 

 

But why would anyone want to watch this?  Limit fits neatly into the genre of the so-called “mountaineering film” (Bergfilm).  The mountaineering film is to Germany what the Western is to America:  A cinematic creation myth, told in a unique visual language, conveying specific values.  Generations of Germans were reared on these films.  The South of Germany is a stark and beautiful region, with breathtaking views over a vast alpine landscape.  To survive, “heroic” qualities and values are needed—strength, smarts, resilience, as well as honesty, reliability and honor.  The mountains touch the sky, and it seems ingrained in the German soul to want to conquer them—along, perhaps, with some nearby countries.  Adolf Hitler himself, an Austrian of diminutive height, dreamt big:  His mountain retreat in the Bavarian heartland had not only a private screening room and well-stocked movie library, but also a large panorama window.  He only had to press a button, and the panels moved aside, revealing a CinemaScope view of the Alps that took over almost the entire side of the room.  Hitler was a movie buff and mountain aficionado whose playful embrace of dramatic high-tech devices is reminiscent of a James-Bond-villain.  He was, however, hardly the first to leave his heart in Bavaria.

 

The genre has its literary roots in the 1880 novel Heidi by Johanna Spyri, the story of a mountain girl, her grandfather and a friendly goat.  In the Seventies, Heidi was adapted into the unlikely form of a manga TV show, Arupusu no shôjo Haiji—a cult hit all over Europe and parts of Asia.  But the earliest and perhaps greatest pioneer of mountaineering films was Arnold Fanck, a cinematic extremist if there ever was one.  Fanck preferred to shoot on location, provided the location was dangerous enough.  He was, in a sense, the Werner Herzog of his day, minus the latter’s clear moral vision and decency.  Arnold Fanck discovered Leni Riefenstahl and gave her her first starring roles films such as Der heilige Berg (The Holy Mountain, 1926) and Die weiße Hölle vom Piz Palü (The White Hell of Pitz Palu, 1929).

 

Modern German film critics are quick to point out that the mountaineering genre was “co-opted” by the Nazis.  “The image of the mountaineering film is poisoned,” said the director Philipp Stölz in a recent interview.  A convenient stance, and not quite correct.  The Nazis didn’t so much co-opted the mountain film, they helped create it.  Some, like Georg Wilhelm Pabst and Luis Trenker, were reluctant converts to National Socialism, others, like Leni Riefenstahl, were more enthusiastic.

Nowadays, young Germans are reclaiming some of their lost cultural reference points—antlers and lederhosen—and a new generation of movie fans is discovering the mountaineering film—perhaps the only authentically and homegrown German genre, a lost treasure trove for rampaging Teutons.

 

In October of 2008, the German music video director Philipp Stölzl (known for his audacious Rammstein-videos) released Nordwand (North Face, 2008) a mountain drama inspired by true events about a 1936 mission to the peak of the Eiger Nordwand, a notoriously tricky mountain.  The Nazis celebrated the climbers as heroes.  Indeed, the climbers fit the Nazi aesthetic.  Fearless, honest, Aryan and, above all, dead.  None of them survived the ascent.  Perhaps this helps explain why Nordwand pulled in just under a half million Euros in its opening weekend, less than one-sixteenth of its budget, making it one of the most stunningly delicious box-office failures in recent German film history.

 

But Pepe Danquart’s To the Limit proves a refreshing and notable exception to an otherwise dusty genre.  It is, first and foremost, a documentary, and therefore in a class of its own, distinct and separate from other mountaineering films.  What we’re seeing is not retro idol worship. The film follows the brothers Thomas and Alexander Huber on their quest to Yosemite and Patagonia, respectively, where they climb some of the highest and most dangerous peaks in the world.

 

The makers of Limit faced some of the technical difficulties inherent in the genre: How to bring your camera and equipment up a mountain.  Danquart and his various DPs—Martin Hanslmayr, Franz Hinterbrandner, Max Reichel and Wolfgang Thaler—bring the viewer almost uncomfortably close the action. The film is shot on 35mm and the images on the DVD a crisp and gorgeous.  Occasionally, the fast-paced editing and professional sound mixing dramatically enhances the suspense, but at a cost.  There are moments that, while undeniably powerful, have the polished feel of a Gatorade-commercial.  Danquart’s blend between documentary footage and narrative approach—the film tells a classic story in three acts—doesn’t always work.  But at least it makes for hair-rising suspense.  In this case, the hubris of the Hubers comes before their fall, literally.  Like any self-respecting mountaineering film, Limit provides a drastic tumble towards the end.  Needless to say, everyone lives, and the only thing irrevocably bruised is the brother’s sizable ego. 

 

The film is presented in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, with good and clear sound.  However, Mona Bräuer’s editing—and the occasional, ill-advised dream sequence—make for a slightly muddled viewing experience. The timeline is at times not quite coherent.  But these are minor quibbles.  Another quibble is the lack of extras on the DVD.  All we get is a short epilogue, telling us what happens after the film is over, a filmmaker biography, as well as a gallery of stills and trailers.  Nothing else is offered.  Still, the film itself is worth seeing.  Perhaps its greatest achievement is moving the genre out of Germany and onto the world stage.  The mountains of California and Patagonia are politically harmless, and the imagery is stunning.  Limit is not so much a mountain epic, as it is a universally truthful story of sibling bickering and touchy-feely love, fueled by charming characters, stunning cinematography and an evocative soundtrack by Dorian Cheah and Christoph Israel.  Overall, a satisfying and exhilarating documentary, that comes pretty close to answering the eternal question:

 

Why climb a mountain when you can go around it?

 

 

-   Emanuel Bergmann