The Dark Glow of the Mountains
A portrait of the world's foremost mountain climber Reinhold Messner, who shares his thoughts before and after his unprecedented achievement of climbing Pakistan's Gasherbrum Peaks 1 and 2 in a single trek, with neither oxygen nor elaborate equipment. Like Herzog's earlier The Great Ecstasy of the Sculptor Steiner, this beautiful mountain climbing film, shot on location in Pakistan, is less a sports documentary than an examination of the fear, intense solitude and exhilaration that drive sportsmen to risk death to conquer goals set up by their own fantastic imaginations. Herzog, who envisions his own cinematic endeavors in quite similar terms, achieves a remarkable rapport with the subjects of both documentaries.