WinstonNoCGI From a technical standpoint this movie is a layman's work in many regards:* Music: Musical score doesn't enhance emotion in any of the scenes. It only serves as a boring, easily written, lame absense of silence. I cannot stand to hear this score any longer. Whenever my mind wants to compare this zero level score to a score of older films, like Luis Trenker's composer Giuseppe Becce's score, it becomes unbearable to me that this is supposed to be the new level of a composer's prowess.* Actors: I brings me to tears that none of them apparently learned their acting skills. None of them shows appropriate facial expressions, none of them can speak like an actor. No emphasis, no stress, no accent, no innotation. Just a common man's speak. And no mimic. (OK, the priest at the end of the movie, Matthias Habich, is a well regarded exception to the crew.)* Sound design: Too may slightly coughs, too many hissy fits. I guess they added them due to the absence of an appropriate musical score. It's like being forced to listen to Darth Vater infamously and inappropriately crying "Nooooooo" over and over again.On the other hand: The camera is marvellous, illumination, color timing and post-production are great to watch, too.The aeroplane should have been rendered more majestically. In the movie it's just "some vehicle", it's not an important, elevating begin of their dangerous journey.Now that I've seen the movie, I wish someone gave me the raw cut, an editor, a decent composer, a small orchestra, and a bunch of good dubbing actor's voices! I would completely redo the movies audio to create a movie that's emotionally poignant and great to watch.This current movie is a pain to watch and appears to be a laboured students' work only.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "Nanga Parbat" is a German movie from 5 years ago that runs for 100 minutes and was directed by Joseph Vilsmaier, a filmmaker for many decades already. It deals with the Messner Brothers climbing the mountain in the title and is based on real events. I am fairly certain that most Germans over the age of 20 still know today who Reinhold Messner is, even if he is already in his 70s now. And most are probably also vaguely aware of his most heartbreaking expedition, the one during which he lost his brother. And that is the one this film is about. I am probably a bit biased here. First of all, I never found Messner likable and second of all, I never understood the concept of faster, further, higher and you probably have to in order to understand Messner's efforts or a appreciate a movie that centers around him. Death certainly was an option and I cannot see why anybody would risk his life for this one, especially as it does nothing good to other people. Yes it may have to do with personal goals, but still, in this context I do not understand why this would be a personal goal for anybody.Florian Stetter does a decent job as the lead actor, but I found Markovics almost as memorable. He is good as usual and always fun to watch. Like I said before, the climbing scenes did nothing for me. The snow-covered mountains may have been a good watch, but in terms of the story or the drama I did not really care. Also the brother relationship was not elaborated on convincingly in my opinion and this may have been the only aspect that could have saved the movie for me. So yeah, I thought this would become a disappointment, but still gave it a chance. It came as I expected, mostly because the topic is fairly unappealing to me. If you like these kind of movies, check out the (in my opinion) equally underwhelming "Nordwand" after watching "Nanga Parbat". Seems to be a trend to use the mountains names for these films. Anyway, I do not recommend the watch. Maybe the best aspect is still the music as it comes from 2-time Academy Award winner Gustavo Santaolalla ("Brokeback Mountain", "Babel").

oragex This is the real story of the ascension of one of the 8000m Himalayan peaks by Reinhold Messner (perhaps the greatest climbers of all times, and most certainly one of the very, very few that make it alive to an older age) and his brother.For those not familiar, the Nanga Parbat peak is considered perhaps the most dangerous 8000m peak of all, because the risk of avalanches is particularly high here.The mountain scenes are almost good, there is real footage of the Nanga Parbat peak, local mountain scenes are not particularly realistic, but not too bad.What is good in this movie, and something I couldn't figure by the Reinhold's book on the subject, is the pain they went through. They had little food, no climbing gear, and especially no warm clothes with them. Equipped this way, they had to bivouac (basically to sit down on the snow and try to sleep without any protection from the cold or blowing snow) two nights, above 6500m. That is terrible, terrible hard to endure. The scenes when they bivouac are hard to look at, because we image what it must have been. I had a few nights of sleep in cold but not freezing temperatures and it's awful, I cannot image what those guys went through. Looking at the film now, I think it shows what kind of a person Reinhold is, this must be the reason he survived through all his altitude climbs, he must be a very rare type of person with an extremely tough and enduring type of organism.This movie also remembers me about the first climber to summit the Nanga Parbat peak, Hermann Buhl, who also had to bivouac near the summit in a standing position for a whole night before the descent.Finally, this is not just a mountaineering film, as the climbing scenes began only at half of the projection.

davidbe-588-341794 I have a limited understanding of this film so am writing this review only because there were no other reviews yet. My understanding is limited because I do not speak German and apparently there has been no release of this film with English subtitles, or at least I could not find one (I did find some English subtitles on the internet but they were both badly out of synch and a mashed Google translation from Russian!). Hence, some of the dialog was rather lost on me and very likely some of the drama as well.I primarily viewed this film not for the story but in the hopes of spectacular mountain scenery and spectacular mountain climbing sequences. There was some of this, but not nearly enough for my tastes, or I would have given the film a higher rating. A better film (also German but available with English subtitles) is North Face (Nordwand, IMDb #tt0844457) which is both very dramatic and has very spectacular mountain climbing sequences (although I still wanted more there as well).To my mind, the best parts of the film took place in Pakistan and in the Pakistani Himalayan foothills. Very nice and interesting photography, and I gleaned from the credits that it was actually filmed there. I love seeing exotic locales like that, which I am unlikely to see otherwise, and I found the film worth my time just for that. I would watch it again if I could find a version with good English subtitles.