Spatial Orientation and Embodied Transcendence in Werner Herzog's Mountain Climbing Films

Summary

Es ist offenbar viel schwieriger, den Berg auf die Leinwand als den Menschen auf den Berg zu bringen.

—Reinhold Messner, 13 Spiegel meiner Seele

[It is apparently much more difficult to bring a mountain to the movie screen than to put a person on the mountain.]

In 1984 Herzog accompanied the famous South Tyrolean mountain climber Reinhold Messner on an expedition to the central Karakoram mountain range in northeastern Pakistan to film the latter's attempt at an unprecedented climbing feat. Messner and his fellow climber Hans Kammerlander were seeking to become the first to ascend two 8,000-meter peaks (Gasherbrum I and Gasherbrum II) in succession without returning to base camp. In a voiceover during an extended panning shot of the Karakoram at the beginning of the film, Herzog lays out what he wanted to explore in the resulting television documentary, Gasherbrum — Der leuchtende Berg (Gasherbrum — the glowing mountain, 1985):

Uns interessierte nicht so sehr einen Film über die bergsteigerische Tat oder über Klettertechnik zu machen. Was wir wissen wollten, war: was geht in Bergsteigern vor, die so etwas Extremes unternehmen?

[We weren't so much interested in making a film about mountain climbing per se, or about climbing techniques. What we wanted to find out was what goes on inside mountain climbers who undertake such extreme endeavors.]