by Paul Cronin
The Dark Glow of the Mountains emerged from questions I was asking myself. What goes on inside the minds of mountain climbers who undertake such extreme endeavours? What drives them to scale these peaks? Why did Messner – a man who lost his brother and some of his toes on Nanga Parbat – feel the need to scale it for a second time? What motivates a man like this? I once asked him, “Don’t you think you’re a little deranged to keep climbing mountains?” His response was simple: “All creative people are insane.” I always felt the man had the wisdom of the snake, sitting there coiled up, waiting for the opportunity to strike. One time he told me he was unable to describe the feelings that compel him to climb any more than he could explain what compels him to breathe.
The film was meant to be the predecessor of something much bigger I had in mind. I wanted to make a feature film in the zone of K2, the second-highest and most dangerous of the Himalayan mountains, and in preparation thought it would be a good idea to make a relatively small film as a test run. I could have written a script as quickly as I normally do, but felt the need to physically experience the environment myself. I wanted to test the situation and learn about the logistical difficulties of filming in such a place and what technical problems we might encounter. How feasible was it to get supplies for everyone up there? During filming we experienced temperatures so low that our raw film stock – which needs to be bent and fed into narrow loops inside the camera – broke like uncooked spaghetti. A gigantic avalanche hit the bottom of the glacier a mile away from us and, like a horizontal atomic explosion, the impact sent a cloud of snow towards us and wiped out our camp. I immediately adapted my plans for a feature film.
Messner talks about his brother’s death.
Messner is a media-savvy showman who has appeared on every talk show ever seen on European television. He knew that in making the film I would be digging deep and might ask questions about his brother’s death. “There will be situations in which I will go far,” I told him, “but you can defend yourself.” Messner knew there would be no mercy for him because film per se knows no mercy.
Initially it was a problem getting him to appear on camera as himself. The first thing we shot was a sequence in the shadow of Nanga Parbat. We drove through the night, and when we awoke the next morning could see mountain in front of us; it was absolutely stunning, not a cloud in the sky. I woke Messner up and set him in front of the camera. He launched into his usual media rap, and I immediately stopped the camera. “This isn’t how I want to make this film with you,” I told him. “I need to see deep inside your heart.” Messner looked at me with a stunned expression and fell silent. He understood how close I was to junking the entire project, and towards evening said to me, “I’ll give you the whole story.” It was difficult to decide whether to include the sequence of him weeping, but I eventually told him, “You’ve done lifeless talk shows all your life. Now, all of a sudden, something personal has been brought to light. You aren’t just another athlete conquering every mountain with cold perfection. This is why I’m not going to edit out the scene.” Once Messner saw the finished film, he was glad we went as far as we did.
What mountain do they climb in the film?
To climb an 8,000-metre mountain is considered a feat, and Messner has done them all. To traverse a mountain using one route and then climb down the other side is considered extraordinary. But what Messner and Kammerlander did during this expedition was traverse two 8,000-metre mountains – Gasherbrum 1 and 2 – in one go, which had never been attempted before. They did it without oxygen or Sherpas, a remarkable accomplishment that hasn’t been repeated since. They set off at two in the morning, in pitch darkness, at a fantastic speed because they could carry only a small amount of provisions. It was clear from the start there was no way for me to follow them with a camera, so the shots of the summit in the film are taken by Messner himself. Before they left the camp he took me aside and said, “Maybe we won’t survive this one. If you don’t hear from us within ten days, we must be dead. It would take twenty days for help to arrive, much too long to save us. If this happens, take over the expedition and see that the Sherpas get paid with the money I deposited in such-and-such a place.” He left without uttering another word.
I went only as far as the base camp, a little over 5,000 metres up, before encountering a Spanish expedition. They had some supply camps to clear out and allowed me to attach myself to their rope and climb with them for another 1,500 metres. The route they took was along a difficult and dangerous area of the glacier, with shifting slabs as big as office blocks separated by deep crevasses. The Spaniards moved up very quickly, and when we arrived at the camp I had clear signs of altitude sickness because I wasn’t sufficiently acclimatised. The symptoms are easily recognisable: you become absurdly apathetic, and I sat down in the snow with my whole body slumped. It was extremely alarming to me, so I decided to go back down to the camp. The Spanish should have stopped me, but stupidly I made the trip on my own. I didn’t follow the flags and took the most direct route instead, across a glacier covered in snow, almost breaking through a snow-covered crevasse three hundred feet deep. I seemed almost to step into a void.
Are you an adventurer?
Anyone who labels himself an “adventurer” today is a disgrace. I have never done anything adventurous for the sake of a film. There is a myth that I purposely make things more difficult for myself; it’s the wrongest of wrongs. I would rather have made Fitzcarraldo in the middle of Central Park, the only problem being there’s no jungle in the neighbourhood. I would have directed the film from an apartment window on Fifth Avenue, just as a few years later I would rather have made Scream of Stone in Munich, where I could have slept in my own bed. Mountaineers might be motivated to seek out the most difficult routes, but not me. I would never have finished a single film if I purposely sought out trouble. Filmmaking is difficult enough, and it’s plain bad luck I’m drawn to characters like Fitzcarraldo, whose mission is to pull a boat over a mountain. I never seek adventure. I’m not irresponsible about things. I just do my job.
There is a difference between exploration and adventure. I’m a curious person, forever searching for new images and dignified places, but though often given the contemptible tag of “adventurer,” I categorically deny the label. It applies only to men and women of earlier times, like the mediaeval knights who travelled into the unknown. The concept has degenerated since then, and today it is an ugly, pitiful embarrassment. Local mountain people, like the Sherpas, the Baltis and the Swiss, traditionally never climbed the peaks that surrounded them, thus robbing them of all dignity. They left the splendour of the mountains intact. There is a foul philosophy behind those bored English gentlemen who started climbing for the sake of it, then scampered off to make sure they were the first at the South Pole. There’s nothing that interesting about the place; it’s just water and drifting ice. The whole thing suggests dead fish – white, rotten, bloated, belly up – floating in dirty water, and since then the self-promoters have run the show. Modern-day adventurers speak about their travels in military terms, like “We conquered the summit,” or “We returned victorious over Mount Everest.” I can’t stand such talk. What a big shot you were in 1910 when you came back from Africa and told the ladies how many elephants you had killed! Do the same thing at a party today and you’ll have a glass of champagne tossed in your face.
I particularly loathe pseudo-adventurism, where the mountain climb becomes about exploring your personal limits. I had arguments with Messner about this because he stylised his media persona on the concept of “The Great Adventurer.” I’m bracing myself for the first barefoot climber on Everest or backwards sprinter through the Sahara, the kind of nonsense the Guinness Book of World Records is full of. You can even book an “adventure holiday” to see the headhunters and cannibals of New Guinea. It’s the kind of absurdity pervading the degenerate concept of “adventurism” that I find so feeble. On the other hand, I love the Frenchman who crossed the Sahara in reverse
gear in a 2CV, and people like Monsieur Mangetout, who ate his own bicycle. I think he also tried to eat a twin-engine aeroplane. What a guy!
He’s dead.
Really? Ah, well. There will surely be another like him.
7
Going Rogue
It’s possible to learn to play an instrument as an adult, but the intuitive qualities needed won’t be there; the body needs to be conditioned from an early age. The same could be never said for filmmaking. A musician is made in childhood, but a filmmaker any time. At the age of about fifteen I read a few pages in an encyclopaedia about things like camera lenses, microphones and how a lab functions. I learnt about optical soundtracks and perspective lines, about what will be in frame if you’re using a 24mm lens and standing here as opposed to a 50mm lens over there. Everything I needed to get myself started came from those few pages. There isn’t much more anyone can teach you about filmmaking.
I always knew film school wasn’t for me. I had no formal training nor had I worked as someone’s assistant. My early films came from my deepest commitments; I never had much of a choice. It will never be the curriculum of a traditional film school and access to equipment that makes someone a filmmaker. Who wants to spend four years on something a primate could learn in a week? What takes time to develop is a personal vision. Knowing certain technical tricks doesn’t make you a filmmaker any more than knowing how to type makes you a novelist.
Tell me about your ideal film school.
Such a place would never exist, though there’s nothing wrong with fantasising wildly. You would be allowed to submit an application only after having travelled, alone and on foot, let’s say from Madrid to Kiev, a distance of nearly two thousand miles. While walking, write about your experiences, then give me your notebooks. I would immediately be able to tell who had really walked and who had not. You would learn more about filmmaking during your journey than if you spent five years at film school. Your experiences would be the very opposite of academic knowledge, for academia is the death of cinema. Somebody who has been a boxer in Africa would be better trained as a filmmaker than if he had graduated from one of the “best” film schools in the world. All that counts is real life.
My film school would allow you to experience a certain climate of excitement of the mind, and would produce people with spirit, a furious inner excitement, a burning flame within. This is what ultimately creates films. Technical knowledge inevitably becomes dated; the ability to adapt to change will always be more important. At my utopian film academy there would be a vast loft with a boxing ring in one corner. Participants, working every day with a trainer, would learn to somersault, juggle and perform magic tricks. Whether you would be a filmmaker by the end I couldn’t say, but at least you would emerge as a confident and fearless athlete. After this vigorous physical work, sit quietly and master as many languages as possible. The end result would be like the knights of old who knew how to ride a horse, wield a sword and play the lute.
How do you keep your own flame burning?
That’s never been my problem, though one simple way is to avoid shooting in studios, which are by definition artificial places. The spontaneity necessary for the kind of cinema I want to create is easily extinguished in such sterile and controlled places. I just don’t like the way they smell; I feel more comfortable waist-deep in a swamp. The green-screen shot at the end of Invincible, with the boy flying up into the air, and the green-screen sequence in Rescue Dawn of Christian Bale, as Dieter Dengler, in his cockpit are the only two moments I have ever shot in a studio. The opening sequence of Bad Lieutenant – where we flooded an entire set – was shot in an empty warehouse rented out for film shoots. The production before us had been set in a prison and they hadn’t yet dismantled everything, so I rushed over and asked if we could make use of a few pieces. The world of the studio rarely offers surprises to the director, in part because the only people you ever run into at such places are paid to be there; hardly anyone interesting ever shows up unexpectedly. There is no environment per se, only four solid walls and a roof. I have always functioned better out in the world, where a story that looked abstract on paper is finally able to engage with real life.
The other thing I’m fiercely opposed to is storyboards, the instruments of cowards who have no faith in their imagination and no confidence in their fantasies. I can see the need for them when it comes to a scene with special effects, but otherwise story boards turn everyone into marionettes of a pre-existing design. The only time I ever storyboarded a sequence was the crash in Rescue Dawn, which was a single event filmed by three cameras that needed careful planning. That really is a big chunk of fuselage impacting onto a rice paddy, followed by a stunt man being propelled by a small explosion. Nothing digital was added. Walter Saxer, the driving force behind Scream of Stone, insisted on preparing a series of storyboards for the more complex climbing sequences in that film, but I ignored them. You can’t turn a mountain into a docile pet.
Is there a pre-planned aesthetic behind your films?
My dislike of perfectionists behind the camera – people who spend hours setting up a single shot – has been an eternal source of conflict with cameramen over the years. I once watched with great impatience as a world-famous cinematographer spent five hours lighting a scene that would have taken me five minutes. Peter Zeitlinger is always trying to sneak “beautiful” shots into our films, and I’m forever preventing it. Our friendship and respect for each other has grown because of this. On Rescue Dawn he wanted to do radical colour correction by turning the jungle almost black and white until the blissful moment of Dieter’s rescue, when full colour would blossom for the final minutes. That’s a rather drastic example; Peter and I often differ in opinion, but we always resolve our differences within twenty seconds. Things are more problematic when there is a spectacular sunset on the horizon and he scrambles to set up the camera to film it. I immediately turn the tripod 180º in the other direction. Thankfully, when we were down in Antarctica making Encounters at the End of the World, the sun was high in the sky twenty-four hours a day for months.
I need people who see and feel things as they are, not someone concerned with creating the most beautiful images possible. I don’t give much thought to the composition of an image; I focus instead entirely on what that shot is about and how it fits into the overall story. Everything else is irrelevant. When it comes to working with cameramen, there are basic discussions about the general look of a film, but rarely about aesthetic details. I know how to articulate images on film without resorting to endless conversations about lighting or spending thousands on production design. I don’t consciously reflect on aesthetics before making a film because, for me, the story always dictates such things. Of course, aesthetics do sometimes enter unconsciously through the back door, because whether we like it or not our preferences always somehow influence the decisions we make. If I were to think about my handwriting while writing an important letter, the words would become meaningless. When you write a passionate love letter and focus on making sure your longhand is as beautiful as possible, it isn’t going to be much of a love letter. But if you concentrate on the words and emotions, your particular style of longhand – which has nothing to do with the letter per se – will somehow seep in of its own accord. Aesthetics, if they even exist, are to be discovered only once a film has been completed. I leave it to the philosophers to enlighten me about such things.
I’m sure you can think of several examples in your films.
There are a small number of such moments of experimentation and stylisation, but these are isolated and specific images. Think of the tower and washerwoman from The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, which I talked about earlier, or the clouds in the final shot of My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, which were digitally added, or certain shots in Heart of Glass, where we placed an orange filter over the lens and slightly underexposed the image; then, during processing, we overexposed the film, which gave it Rembrandt-like colours. While working on H
eart of Glass, Schmidt-Reitwein and I studied the work of seventeenth-century French painter Georges de La Tour. I wanted to capture the same atmosphere you find in his canvases, and some of the interior sequences were filmed using only candlelight. During production on Fitzcarraldo in the jungle there were only ten minutes every day when the sun was setting because we were so close to the equator, and sometimes we would wait for that perfect moment just before sunset when the light in the sky was exceptionally beautiful. Most of Even Dwarfs Started Small was shot with a relatively wide-angle 24mm lens because I wanted the characters to be in focus amidst the extraordinary landscapes.
Perhaps the best example is the trance-like dream sequences in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, showing what looks like a newly discovered foreign world. One influence here was the experimental German filmmaker Klaus Wyborny, who I brought along when I went to the Spanish Sahara, where he shot Super 16 footage of the caravan in the desert. The finest of the dream sequences was shot by my brother Lucki when he was travelling in Burma as a nineteen-year-old. He filmed what he described as a strange and shaky pan across a wide valley full of grandiose temples. I thought it was very mysterious and absolutely tremendous, so I begged him to let me use it. I modified the image by projecting it onto a semitransparent screen from very close up, which made it the size of my palm, then filmed it with a 35mm camera from the other side, so you can clearly see the fabric of the screen. The image seems to flicker in and out of darkness because I purposely didn’t synchronise the projector with the camera. I also changed the colours slightly in the lab. It’s the same thing I did at the start of Heart of Glass with the images of the waterfall I spoke about earlier and other landscape shots just after the opening credits.