When the Limit Is Too Far

'Climb, climb, climb, blah, blah, blah."

That's how one audience member at a recent screening summed up "To the Limit," which opens Friday at Cinema Village. Unfortunately, it's a somewhat accurate description of Pepe Danquart's documentary about two German brothers who have devoted their lives to glorious feats of mountaineering.

But this digression-prone portrait of two men addicted to conquering anything vertical has some strong points, too, including striking footage of what must be one of the world's hardest-to-film sports, and an undertone of despair that's a refreshing departure from the cowabunga enthusiasm of your typical extreme-sports movie.

In the opening frames, Mr. Danquart's camera lingers on the serene meadows and gushing streams of Yosemite National Park. We are then introduced to Thomas and Alexander Huber, who don't linger on anything. These ponytailed Germans have come to California with only one thing on their minds: a 3,000-foot granite slab known as El Capitan. The brothers' mission is not about going where no man has gone before — El Cap is pretty much the Malibu of the climbing world — but about doing it faster. Most climbers take three days to get up the main route, known as the Nose. The Huber brothers plan to do it in two and a half hours.

"To the Limit" charts their attempt at this near-impossible challenge (which some call "speed rock climbing" and categorize as a distinct sport) casually; there are no route diagrams or dramatic countdowns. Mr. Danquart is more interested in what compels these men to cling to the side of a big rock all day, and his film is more about the weltanschauung of these extreme athletes than world records.

The focus is as narrow as some of El Cap's precarious handholds. Apart from a chance encounter with a Vietnam veteran who says he's been climbing in Yosemite for years, there's nothing about the history of mountaineering, much less speed climbing. And while there's plenty of scenery on display, nature never becomes the awesome presence it is in the films of Werner Herzog.

Like many a Herzog character, the Hubers are border-hopping adventurers bent on conquest. Haircuts are just one of the many modern concerns they've excised from their lives. But the mountaineering obsession that allows them to travel to exotic places (such as Patagonia, where part of the film takes place) is also a prison. "As soon as we start [climbing], the freedom is gone," Alexander says. Watching them tape their hands and fret over lost time, one realizes that their goal is not about freedom. They're driven, instead, by the need — an immortal and perhaps aesthetically driven one — to surmount, one that George Mallory famously summed up when asked why he climbed Mt. Everest: "Because it's there."

Mr. Danquart, however, has something less vainglorious in mind. As in his superb documentary about the Tour de France, "Hell on Wheels," the director trades a standard account of exhilaration and triumph for one of injury and despair. He's drawn to uber-athletes who are struck down by superior forces. In "Hell on Wheels," that force was Lance Armstrong. Here it is gravity and, in the Andes, the kind of punishing weather that makes lesser men yearn for their mothers.

These deflations are the best parts of "To the Limit." Interviews with an earnest, zenned-out American climber in search of "higher meaning" through climbing, on the other hand, are a bit hokey. More convincing are the kinetic visuals: a close-up of a calloused hand gripping a rocky knob; a long shot of a Huber brother stretching for a toehold, ropes dangling from his belt like some sort of weird plumage. By necessity, many of the camera angles are unorthodox; at times, the footage itself is a heroic feat. There's also a great scene in which the brothers take turns swooping and running bare-chested along a wall, racing the clock — "Spider-Man" without computer graphics. Speed conquers fear, a Huber brother notes at one point, and as you watch this sequence, you believe him.

But when Thomas falls while setting a cam — a moment unfortunately not captured on film — everything changes. Visibly shaken, he drags a shirt over his head and begs his brother to slow down. It's moving to see him so reduced.

Like the exhausted German cyclists profiled in "Hell on Wheels," the Hubers remain subdued on camera. They're at their most expressive when they're climbing; otherwise, they seem sealed off in their own little world. When Alexander says his pastime is "an absolute revolt against common sense," he does so with a Teutonic reserve that makes it a bit hard to feel. More tangible is the frustration felt by their mother, who chides Thomas, a father of two, for not giving up his dangerous "addiction." Like the viewer, she can't get up anywhere near where her two sons go. And she can't really get in, either.