Cerro Torre: A Snowball's Chance in Hell

This is an overedited mess that never lingers on an event or part of a story. It tries to rush over the initial Cerro Torre story and Maestri's 2 climbs. It's all presented in an obnoxious way like some over the top TikTok video with noisy music and happy-go-lucky energy. And the climbers don't have much wise to say so it's just random statements.

Yet the bad production and frantic messy way it's all presented doesn't take away from the climb. It also does acknowledge that the Red Bull team ruined part of the mountain with bolts to film the first climb attempt. Then only on the next climb attempts did they use a helicopter to film instead. It's nice that they are honest about it. Unfortunately all this background story is super rushed and you don't get much info at all here. You will need to watch another documentary about Cerro Torre to get all of this stuff. Also, David Lama wanted to rappel down to put up safety bolts so that he could free climb the mountain a known way with those temporary bolts already in place for protection. He didn't do that because of huge internet backlash, the doc never even mentions this.

The climb itself is cool. David Lama wore a head cam and you really got to see the mountain up close. You even saw some difficult climbs he made. All of this is nice and I wonder how cool this documentary would have been if it was only the history and then the climb? Without any of that random stuff they put in to make it "action".

Some interviews are fine som are super cringe. There are a lot of talking heads so you constantly see people just talk about themselves and about how they feel about climbing. Completely pointless stuff. The doc doesn't know what it tries to be as it jumps from Cerro Torre to some old American climber talking about how hippie and cool he was when he was young. What the hell does that have to do with Chile and Argentina and that specific mountain? Why just have random climbers speak to the camera when you could have shown us more history from the mountain or more of the climb itself?

They also skip the death on a mountain nearby when they were there and the Red Bull helicopter filmed a woman, Carlyle Norman, who was left behind all alone try to climb down. They never told the rescue team about her being alive. The rescue team tried to climb up, but couldn't as the storm got too bad. She stood not chance at survival and fell down to her death. This doc tries to be childish and fun so of course they won't even hint at this event that took part days before their climb. But people do die on mountains and it would have been great for them to illustrate that. Hell, David Lama himself later died on a mountain. It's not something you can hide forever.

While delivering everything you'd expect from a contemporary climbing movie - vivid first-person-pov, breathtaking vista, vertigo-inducing shots ... - this production delves deeper which makes for a better film. The difference came only with the problems the production ran into - while originally planned as a simple climbing flick, to be finished in a few weeks, in the end they had gone to Patagonia 3 times, had filmed 2 summit climbs and many more tries, had to weather a veritable shitstorm from large parts of the climbers community - and they used all this material to shed some light on the background, the philosophy, the frustrations of expedition climbing and so on. So this became a much richer and interesting project, even if the budget must have exploded. And to top that, they also put in a historical flashback, some interviews or contributions (Reinhold Messner and Jim Bridwell amongst others) and, last but not least, portraits of the camera team and their struggles to catch David Lama's final climb (which would be worth a documentation of its own).

Overall, recommended for everyone with even a slight interest in mountaineering or climbing, and much more interesting than a simple sports movie (as planned) would be.

Climbing, especially at altitude, is a controversial sport. How much risk can you take? What style and equipment are fair to use? Should one trust the experts and community, or only himself?

Cerro Torre is an excellent example of this controversy - first with Maestri's disputed ascent, then with his undisputed but condemned one, then with Kennedy & Kruk cleansing the mountain. "Cerro Torre" captures all of this and adds a story of David Lama, a Nepalese wonder boy obsessed with free climbing the peak.

Some interest in climbing is probably required to fully enjoy this movie. If you don't understand the delicate difference between free & aid climbing, or don't know where Patagonia is and why climbing there is special, then you might not enjoy it as deeply as more informed viewers. However the amazing scenery, thrilling climbing sequences and conflicts between the climbers are there for everyone.

Extra kudos to the film crew for getting to the summit themselves!

Highly recommended.