Trango (dir. Leo Hoorn)
Me as I sit on my couch eating cheddar-flavoured Shapes and sipping on a Coke Zero as I watch people climb dangerous mountains covered in snow and ice and avalanches happen nearby: Good for them!
Trango charts the efforts of a small group of crazy people (Christina Lustenberger, Jim Morrison, Chantel Astorga and Nick McNutt) who intend on not only ascending the 20,000 foot West Face of Great Trango Tower in the Karakoram Range of Northern Pakistan, but to also then become the first people to ski down it. A big ol’ “NOPE!” from me, of course, preferring the comfort of being seated and watching others engage in such shenanigans. It is impressive, though, and that’s really hard to deny as the camera swings and swoops around mountaintops, glances up at impressive natural landscapes and zeroes in up-close on the tasks of these people as they go about securing their safety as they attempt feats of physical grandeur.
Directed by Leo Hoorn, Trango is produced by North Face. They self-describe as “a leader in outdoor performance clothing and gear for hiking, skiing, trail running, camping and other adventures.” Because of that you can probably rest assured that there’s not going to be too much here in the way of suspense. It would be bad press to see them all fall to their deaths. Therefore, the thrill of this short film is the sheer scale of it—and perhaps counting how many North Face logos appear (there's really nothing any worse here than Yves Saint Laurent getting Pedro Almodovar to make a movie full of YSL costumes so I say this predominantly as a joke). The images really are awe-inspiring, though, and I wish I had been able to see this on a big screen. They are crisply shot and offer a real sense of scale to the (lunatic) endeavor. Although having said that, Free Solo in IMAX was stomach-churning so perhaps it was for the best I didn’t.
I am a big fan of Lawrence Schiller and Bruce Nyznik’s Oscar-winning The Man Who Skied Down Everest as well as Richard Dennison’s Birdmen of Kilimanjaro, so I guess such feats of high altitude human adventure interest me in a way that I wouldn’t necessarily clock for myself. At just 45 minutes, it cannot be said the film wears out its welcome with back stories that ultimately aren’t important, but the hints and glimpses of lives back home—and in particular a past tragedy—do add some nice dramatic colour amid the vistas.
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