In June 1984, two high-profile mountaineers, Reinhold Messner and Hans Kammerlander, embark on an extraordinary mission. They plan to scale two peaks in the Karakoram Mountains back to back, Gasherbrum 1 and 2, both exceeding 8000 metres, with no breathing apparatus, minimal baggage and without returning to base camp. Herzog accompanies the expedition to the base camp situated in the endless expanse of ice.

We were not so interested in making a film about the physical act of mountain climbing or about climbing techniques. We wanted to know what makes mountaineers undertake such extreme expeditions. What draws them towards the summit like a magnetic force? Do these mountains and peaks not form the very fibre of our being?" Werner Herzog’s commentary raises this question as the camera pans across a seemingly endless panorama of rugged and misshapen peaks, some illuminated by the sunshine while others glower in the obscurity. The music which accompanies this scene helps to convey the filmmaker's belief that these formidable yet captivatingly beautiful mountains make up part of the landscape of our souls, and are perhaps also metaphors for the extreme and irrational challenges we undertake.

At the same time, Herzog’s film is about borderline situations and, not unlike THE GREAT ECSTASY OF WOODCARVER STEINER, the struggle against human physical limitations. There are of course parallels with the pursuit of the superlative, as personified by the “Guinness World Records”. Reinhold Messner, the leading “star” amongst Europe's alpinists, does not shy away from stating his desire to be the best. He reiterates the sheer danger of the exploit time and again, and at the end he declares the successful ascent of both mountains to be the achievement of the century.

Herzog only briefly mentions their decampment from Skardu (in northern Pakistan), the “last place that can be reached by road or by plane,” and the ensuing 150-kilometre trek that the members of the exhibition have to make to base camp. He takes little interest in the porters and the social circumstances which oblige them to carry tremendous burdens through dangerous terrain without the appropriate footwear. At one stage the porters have to lug the packs and trunks down a slope to a raging river. Rocks tumble past them down into the depths, as though the director had released them to demonstrate how steeply the path descends... This shot is like a quotation from AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD (1972) and vouches for the fact that feature films and documentaries alike are indebted to the same constellation of images in Herzog's work.

Herzog reveals his protagonists to be obsessive monomaniacs, in particular Messner, whose egotism is also apparent in the way that he clearly dominates the more reserved Kammerlander. When Herzog asks if he and Kammerlander are friends, he replies without much hesitation, “I wouldn't say that exactly.” The old-fashioned ideal of the “loyal mountaineer buddies” could not be more at odds with his cool pragmatism: "We each take responsibility for ourselves; it is an unspoken agreement."
The question posed at the beginning of the film as to the purpose of this extreme expedition is never really answered. Perhaps the absence of a rational answer is why Herzog is so fascinated by an undertaking that is ultimately nothing but pointless labour. Even when Messner recalls the ascent of Nanga Parbat during which his brother was killed (and which led to savage attacks in the press and from fellow mountaineers), he cannot conceal his pride when referring to the lethal dangers that are an inextricable element of his expeditions. It is only much later, when the filmmaker asks Messner how it felt to “look his mother in the eye” after the death of his brother, that the mountaineer begins crying uncontrollably. It is the actual moment of truth in the entire film.

Occasionally Herzog underlines the pride which his protagonists take when dealing with the risks of their expeditions. After the two of them have left base camp and are nothing more than dots on the glacier in the distance, we hear what sounds like a terrible storm and Herzog cuts to a scene of a violent avalanche. There is no evidence, however, that this storm belongs to the chronology of events - the short sequence suggests a possible rather than a present danger; shown, as it were, in the conditional tense.

Messner lets his vanity show, referring to mountaineering as “a characteristic of human degeneration", and adding, “all artists, all creative people, are mental cases.” He is, he says, fascinated by high altitudes and by the “death zone” (altitudes exceeding 7000 metres in which oxygen becomes scarce). This mindset is like a desecration of the ideal of German Romanticism, a genre steeped in motifs of both longing for one’s own death as well as great heights, though in those days these were metaphysical extremes rather than measurements of altitude. Messner nonetheless fancies himself as an artist, as he explains towards the end of the film. “Personally, I sometimes feel that I am drawing on these 3,000- or 4,000-metre high mountain faces... I draw lines, living lines. I feel they actually exist afterwards. Even if I'm the only one who can feel and see them, because I've lived them, and the others will never see them... They will exist forever.” He already seems to have forgotten that the expedition he has just completed was accomplished with a partner.

At the end, Messner describes his utopia. He simply wants to carry on walking, ever further, across deserts and through forests, “Just walk until the world ends or until the horizon disappears.” Herzog responds, “How odd, I have exactly the same idea!” A man must travel his own road. This sentence echoes through many Westerns and other films. But one can also misinterpret its meaning, and believe that the longer and harder the path, the better the man. To that extent, the egocentric closing of THE DARK GLOW OF THE MOUNTAINS is entirely ambivalent. Messner concludes, “I presume that when my life ends, the world will end with it.”

Production Country

Germany (DE)

Production Period

1984

Production Year

1984

color

color

Aspect Ratio

1:1,33

Duration

Medium-Length Film (31 to 60 Min.)

Type

Documentary

Genre

Biography / Portrait

Topic

Sport, Film History

Available Media

DVD, Blu-ray Disc, DCP

Original Version

German (de)

DVD

Subtitles

English (en), Spanish (es), French (fr), Italian (it), Portuguese (Brazil) (pt), Russian (ru), Chinese (zh), Arabic (ar), German (de), Turkish (tr)

Blu-ray Disc

Subtitles

English (en), French (fr), Italian (it), Russian (ru), Chinese (zh), Arabic (ar), Turkish (tr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Lithuanian (lt), German (full)

DCP

Subtitles

German (de), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Arabic (ar), Chinese (zh), Russian (ru), Italian (it), Lithuanian (lt), Turkish (tr)

Note on the Format

Verschlüsseltes Herzog-Kurzfilm-Sammel-DCP (8 Filme)