Nordwand, the original German title of this wrenching mountaineering movie, fits the film better than North Face—it sounds more ominous, like gray rock and gray skies, storms and disaster. North Face sounds like an urban wuss wearing a fleece jacket. And there is zero fleece (or wussery) in North Face. It's all wool and canvas and other 1936 climbing technology, plus lots of bad luck, bad decisions, hubris, bleeding, screaming, and desperation.

It's 1936, and a bunch of climbers are camped at the base of the Eiger, a very nasty mountain in Switzerland whose north face remains unconquered, despite a few (fatal) attempts in recent years. The climbers come from all over the world, but the Germans are under special pressure—the führer wants a little alpine glory, and even though the film's tragic heroes (Toni Kurz and Andreas Hinterstoisser) don't much care for politics, they get wrangled into roping up and setting out. Unfortunately for them.

Within spitting distance of the encampment, journalists and other bloated drunks hang out in a fancy hotel, stuffing their faces and barking in reports to their copy editors. The horrible juxtaposition between the Very Bad Shit that happens on the mountain and the Very Frivolous Shit that happens in the hotel makes North Face (based on a true story) difficult to watch—that, and the stunning cinematography. Director Philipp Stölzl sends the camera careening up and down the Eiger and vertiginously peeking down its lethal walls. And something's going on with those Germans: They're exploiting the power of stormy grays and Ashcan realism to fantastic effect. (Several of the shots have the gloomy combination of starkness and richness of Robert Henri's 1902 painting Snow in New York). Uli Edel, who directed last year's Baader Meinhof Complex, pulled the same trick, playing the grays of German institutional architecture against the loamy darkness of the radicals' hideouts and the stinging brightness of the prison cells where they spend the final bit of the film. North Face isn't just a very convincing argument against climbing mountains: It's a gorgeous—and occasionally gory—tragedy. recommended