Berg

This movie is just a diamond of a movie; not only in its pure, 24 carat beauty - but it works as a prism, the way a diamond does: it refracts the light of life itself, into an array of images on a screen that are just haunting, silencing, humbling, breathtaking, into a pace that is ancient and articulating the deep mystery of things. Because only if one slows down, can one hear mountains crawl.

Not a movie for plot-hungry, sugar-coated candy lovers, like mister Boddaert above: it shows nature in all its merciless beauty, it shows the age and pace of another dimension of life: one that human beings have disconnected from long ago, but would do well to re-connect to again: it makes tangible the mystery in which we float, that carries us, that can kill us, that is ungraspable, but that is the source of life.

The pace of this movie might be forcing most viewers into a rapturous detox: from the modern rapid influx of meaningless and shallow visuals we are so addicted to - but I promise: if you make it through detox (which mister Goddaert clearly couldn't), if you manage to let go of your hunger for color, for talk, for plot, and for all that is sweet to the eyes but anesthesia to the soul, you might discover a resonance in yourself with an older, quieter, more meaningful dimension. It is there where you hear mountains crawl, and where we are spoken to. You might feel lifted up as well as humbled, shrunk down to your true proportions, cured from the hybris that is the norm in our sad world.

As an avid mountaineer and hiker myself, I was completely blown away by Berg, which I saw at the premiere at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam.

Even though the film is mostly made up of static shots of the mountains, the score and the rhythm of the editing glide you through the film, as if you're walking through the Slovenian alps yourself.

If possible, see it in the cinema though, since the sound design and the music are essential for the film.

Every now and again, we see three characters trekking through the barren wilderness that is the mountainous region of the Slovenian Triglav National Park. They provide the loosest of connections to the next eighty minutes of this rather dryly assembled collection of images of the peaks and valleys that reach almost 10,000 feet. Filmed entirely in monochrome, and using the audio of wind and rain and animals to good effect, director Joke Olthaar offers us a sequence of locked-off or very brief moving images that demonstrate the danger, beauty and the perils of life amongst the cold and the frequently hostile weather conditions (unless you're an ibex!). There isn't a script to speak of, it's largely left to this compilation of photo-style views to convey to us the sheer power and unforgiving nature of the elements. There is a superb, extended, storm scene that had me reaching for a blanket and by the end I did appreciate rather better just how vulnerable mankind is when facing the wrath of nature. I also found that after a while I started to see human and animal shapes in the rock formations - a seal, a face, a turtle - quite bizarre! Sadly, though, the black and white nature of the presentation and the very static, rather unimaginative, style of delivery did rob the thing of potency after about half an hour, and the relentless bleakness of the film started to wash over me a bit. It does feature some impressive (astonishingly obtained) photography but the odd splash of colour and perhaps some sparing narrative might have brought it alive more. It is worth a watch and a big screen does more justice to the scenery - it just could have been a bit more engaging.

This is like watching your boring uncle's vacation slides. But then worse. Nothing happens. The composition of the images is directionless, without focus. Often you cannot even see what you are looking at, the images have no contrast, no depth.

This movie does not capture in any way a mountain experience.

Pretentious and lazy. Couldn't watch this to the end.