I love mountain climbing movies. Not that I'm into mountain climbing, I actually need to employ panic suppression techniques when I climb onto the fifth rung of a ladder.
As far as movies go, real climbers seem to go for the documentary films that don't integrate a fictitious story, which sometimes can be rockier than the real rocks. In one list of the 20 best climbing movies, the ones I like appeared towards the bottom including "Vertical Limit" with everyone going crazy on K2.
But where films like "Vertical Limit" and "The Eiger Sanction" are about the adventure and the thrills, "Summit Fever" goes to the core of what makes people climb and often die doing it.
Michael (Freddie Thorpe) starts an internship in Dad's financial firm, but quickly realises that the adrenaline rush of falling share prices can't beat the adrenaline rush of falling off the Eiger. He accepts an invitation from his friend, Jean-Pierre (Michel Biel), to "swap suit and tie for ice axe and crampons" and join him and a group scaling the big three: The Matterhorn, The North Face of the Eiger and Mont Blanc.
We learn that the driving force of this fraternity of climbers is summed up in the old biblical phrase "...to eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die". Michael has reservations about the culture.
There are a lot of falls in this film and people die suddenly. The film looks amazingly real and some of the scenes are breathtaking. I wondered if this was an exaggeration, but no, apparently Mont Blanc is the most dangerous mountain in the world with an average of 100 fatalities per year compared to about 300 in total on Everest.
There is amazing sang-froid when someone spins off into the void after a rope snaps or they misjudge a leap to a ledge. "He died doing what he loved" is said often in the film, but as Michael points out to Jean-Pierre after he saw two of their friends fall, "Don't you get it, they died screaming".
Isabelle (Mathilde Warnier) who starts out as carefree as the rest also begins to have reservations when she falls for Michael. However he eventually goes in the opposite direction, accepting that climbing is engrained in his DNA.
The final sequence in the storm with the supernatural encounter seems an odd touch; the otherworld experience may have been best left to Michael Richard Plowman's evocative score, which defined the unspoken thoughts and emotions of the characters.
However the last scene between Isabelle and Michael makes up for any shortcomings when they make a decision that is at once bitter sweet, but inevitable.
As far as movies go, real climbers seem to go for the documentary films that don't integrate a fictitious story, which sometimes can be rockier than the real rocks. In one list of the 20 best climbing movies, the ones I like appeared towards the bottom including "Vertical Limit" with everyone going crazy on K2.
But where films like "Vertical Limit" and "The Eiger Sanction" are about the adventure and the thrills, "Summit Fever" goes to the core of what makes people climb and often die doing it.
Michael (Freddie Thorpe) starts an internship in Dad's financial firm, but quickly realises that the adrenaline rush of falling share prices can't beat the adrenaline rush of falling off the Eiger. He accepts an invitation from his friend, Jean-Pierre (Michel Biel), to "swap suit and tie for ice axe and crampons" and join him and a group scaling the big three: The Matterhorn, The North Face of the Eiger and Mont Blanc.
We learn that the driving force of this fraternity of climbers is summed up in the old biblical phrase "...to eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die". Michael has reservations about the culture.
There are a lot of falls in this film and people die suddenly. The film looks amazingly real and some of the scenes are breathtaking. I wondered if this was an exaggeration, but no, apparently Mont Blanc is the most dangerous mountain in the world with an average of 100 fatalities per year compared to about 300 in total on Everest.
There is amazing sang-froid when someone spins off into the void after a rope snaps or they misjudge a leap to a ledge. "He died doing what he loved" is said often in the film, but as Michael points out to Jean-Pierre after he saw two of their friends fall, "Don't you get it, they died screaming".
Isabelle (Mathilde Warnier) who starts out as carefree as the rest also begins to have reservations when she falls for Michael. However he eventually goes in the opposite direction, accepting that climbing is engrained in his DNA.
The final sequence in the storm with the supernatural encounter seems an odd touch; the otherworld experience may have been best left to Michael Richard Plowman's evocative score, which defined the unspoken thoughts and emotions of the characters.
However the last scene between Isabelle and Michael makes up for any shortcomings when they make a decision that is at once bitter sweet, but inevitable.