Higher Ground is an American climbing film that claims to
document a 'yearlong journey as seen through the eyes of a selection
of world-class climbers.' We were looking forward to it after
watching the trailer
for the film on the Posing Productions web site.
Unfortunately while the trailer's great, with a really nice,
fast-cutting dramatic feel to it, the film itself doesn't really live
up to its own publicity. It's a selection of episodes of different
climbers climbing different types of routes and talking about their
climbing.
Unfortunately while some of the sequences are visually dramatic,
particularly the mad mixed climbing bits, the film doesn't
really hang together. It's far too long and unstructured, there
doesn't seem to be anything linking any of the different climbers or
episodes together and mostly there's not even a sense of progression
in some of the individual episodes - we ended up thinking that
climbing seemed quite dull really.
Then there are the endless voiceovers which mostly, to be frank,
aren't actually very interesting, don't tell you much about the
climbers' inner world or even anything practical about the climbing,
they're just a bit self-indulgent and bland.
Maybe we'd have found it more interesting if they were British
climbers on British routes, but we couldn't help feeling that Higher
Ground needs some seriously savage editing and a lot more fizz to
hold your attention.
Good on Posing Productions for bringing it in, but despite some
dramatic footage and some gripping individual moments, the overall
sludginess of the film means that we can't really recommend it unless
you're a conoisseur of American climbing.
Nice idea, but it could have been executed a lot more effectively.
Never mind, Posing has some other much better DVDs to choose from
:-)
More details at www.posingproductions.com
