North Face (Nordwand) (2008)
Average Rating: 7/10
Reviews Counted: 55
Fresh: 46 | Rotten: 9
A tense and gripping spectacular piece of snow-bound historical German film-making.
Average Rating: 6.7/10
Critic Reviews: 18
Fresh: 13 | Rotten: 5
A tense and gripping spectacular piece of snow-bound historical German film-making.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.8/5
User Ratings: 3,253
Movie Info
A handful of men set aside their differences to conquer one of Europe's tallest mountains in this period drama inspired by a true story. In 1936, Nazi Germany is looking to shore up its reputation in the eyes of the world, and after a pair of German climbers dies in an effort to climb the North face of the Eiger in the Swiss Alps, the state is looking to find another group who can succeed where the earlier team failed. Henry Arau (Ulrich Tukur), the publisher of one of Berlin's biggest
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Cast
-
Benno Fürmann
Toni Kurz -
Florian Lukas
Andi Hinterstoisser -
Johanna Wokalek
Luise Fellner -
Ulrich Tukur
Henry Arau -
Simon Schwarz
Willy Angerer -
Georg Friedrich
Edi Rainer -
Erwin Steinhauer
Emil Landauer -
Petra Morzé
Elisabeth Landauer -
Hanspeter Müller-Drossaar...
Hans Schlunegger -
Branko Samarovski
Albert von Allmen
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All Critics (55) | Top Critics (18) | Fresh (46) | Rotten (9) | DVD (3)
The mountaineers climb for reasons that have little to do with nationalism - reasons the film clumsily attempts to articulate in words. It's far more successful conveying those inspirations with stunning images of them scaling daunting heights.
Top CriticA straightforward, wickedly suspenseful Man vs. Nature saga of the type that rarely gets made any more.
Philipp Stolzl worked in the same dangerous conditions as the original climbers, and we can feel the chill and peril in our bones. It's a shame, then, that the screenwriter, unlike the camera crew and the characters, was afflicted with such timidity.
North Face" is something of an old-fashioned epic shot with modern wisdom and technique, a man vs. nature flick that also weighs the importance of the individual vs. the social while exposing the mean cost of vicarious thrills.
The word "gripping" doesn't do it justice.
This white-knuckle adventure is a literal and metaphoric cliff-hanger that gets a spectacular foothold on an unforgiving mountain.
Epic, intimate and gripping.
Harrowing German drama is a real cliffhanger.
Very likely the best movie ever made about mountain climbing, with some barbed commentary on life under Nazism.
It's Kolja Brandt's gloriously edge-of-the-seat/seat-of-the-pants cinematography (much of the film was shot on location) that really packs a natural wallop.
The images of the Eiger are both majestic and harrowing, and the action is as exciting as in any mountain-climbing movie to date.
I have no idea if anything beyond the essentials is accurate. A good deal of it feels more like a 1930s movie than a 1930s event
There's no subtext and not much character development, but those aren't really missed.
The romantic subplot is underwritten and overwrought. More compelling is ... the impressively harrowing mountain footage.
Harrowing historical yarn mixes Third Reich manliness and white-knuckle mountaineering
Some of the plotting (credited to four screenwriters) is too conventional and convenient, and the clunky running time is a problem - two-plus hours of this material is too much.
With knuckles alternately white from suspense and black from frostbite, the alpinists get progressively harder to tell apart. But the most compelling character, for all its brutal enormity, always was the mountain.
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Movie: ID: 770800234 Title: North Face (Nordwand) Release Date: 2010-01-29 00:00:00.0 MPAA: 6 Status: 1
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Foreign Titles
- Nordwand (DE)
- Duel au Sommet (FR)
North Face is a mountain climbing film that tries to be a lot more than that. Overall it is a good movie, but I can't help but feel that it could have and should have been a whole lot better. I'm not saying it is bad, but I think the director, Philipp Stolzl, tries to do a little too much; when if he would have just stocked to the basics it could have been a lot more exciting on the ascension and much more suspenseful on the descension.
North Face is the story of two young Germans who are attempting to be the first to climb North Face. They are racing two Austrians to the top, as many reporters and spectators gather at a hotel to watch and take part in history. Among the reporters is a woman, who knows the two Germans and loves one of them, that being Toni. She is excited to see them be the first to make it and never really shows any concern about them attempting it.
Where the movie goes wrong in my opinion is that it can't just stick with the climbers. It cuts from the mountain to the hotel every five minutes. The action is up on the mountain with the climbers, not down on the ground with people who are just sitting and talking. Also I don't think the love interest really added that much to the movie, except just to add another plot detail. Before the climb, I didn't really see the love being all that strong between the two characters. I'd have liked it a lot more had they cut out a lot of the scenes down below and added a lot more to the actual mountain climbing scenes. The scenes that take place on the mountain are tremendous. The scenery is beautiful at times and scary at times.
While I don't feel like the movie was completely ruined, I was just kind of put off by some of the plot decisions. I enjoyed the experience though, as it was times an exciting, suspenseful and ultimately sad story.