Hacker Cinema
The Dark Glow of the Mountains
Gasherbrum - Der leuchtende Berg
1985 · Film · documentary · 45 min
Directed by Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog follows mountaineers Hans Kammerlander and Reinhold Messner during their expedition into climbing the Gasherbrum mountains, which has some of the most difficult peaks to be conquered, and they'll do it without the use of oxygen tanks. Herzog also takes some time to hear about their past experiences with other mountains, their personal tragedies and the reasons why they are so involved with such activity.
2 positivefrom 2 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
2 comments on Hacker News
Well he didn't have psychopathic Kinski to mess with everything and everybody, throwing childish tantrums over trivial things, did he. I mean the locals during filming offered to Herzog to murder him as a favor, seeing him as an evil spirit... you can't go much further than that.
I also recommend ie Dark Glow of the Mountains about Messner and Kammerlander doing properly hardcore expedition on Gasherbrums traverse in Pakistan that was never done before. He interviews them before they depart and after coming back, surviving by series of mere chances in extreme environment, pushed to absolute limits of human bodies and minds. Since I do a bit of mountaineering I can truly appreciate characters and the insights that no hollywood fantasies can ever come close to. True documentaries.
A bit controversial sidenote - these are the efforts that I have huge respect for, not doing it for the money, not chasing sponsors with every move. Seeing some world championships or olympics I can't have much respect for those very rich sportsmen who are focusing more on chasing new sponsors than actual spirit of the game.
Must say, his portrait of Rheinhold Messner's and Hans Kammerlander's double summit of both Gasherburms in one go is on another level compared to basically any mountain documentaries of that era. Name is Dark glow of the mountains, german speaking but I found some english subtitles.
You have dark aspects of protagonists revealed, questions about what to do with belongings if they don't come back and so on. Its not the style that was common at that time. I mean, it gives you perspective on extreme mountaineering and people doing it like few documents do, even in these days.
Whether you like Messner's personality or not, its a damn fine documentary and shows why these guys are not mere athletes like world champions/olympic winners.