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North Face – sp – If you are at all interested in mountain climbing – dangerous mountain climbing, or if you think you might want to learn more about risk taking mountain climbing this movie is for you. This is an award winning German film with English subtitles, set in Germany in 1936. The government has encouraged German mountain climbers to show the world how brave and strong they are by climbing this most difficult mountain. The chilling (and we do mean ice cold and freezing) attempt to do this feat is the main plot of this film. It is based on a true story. Most of it, including all the life and death parts of the movie, are based on known facts of an actual occurrence. One of the guests at our film course was a young alpine mountain climber who not only had heard of the actual events shown but verified that all the situations on the mountain , pitfalls and climbing techniques with pitons and ropes etc were quite authentic. This was a period piece nicely depicting the lavish hotel setting at the base of the mountain. However, most of the two hours and one minute of this film take place in the outside bitter cold. We also learned that this movie is in the tradition of some great German mountain climbing movies which we haven’t seen. While we were caught up with the suspense and adventure, we did feel there was too much time up there in the mountain with snow continually falling or alternating between flakes to avalanches. The movie was very skillfully done. The story line was interesting and painful, but wasn’t complex and stimulating enough for all we had to bear in watching it. (2010)