2006 was a wild time. Two years earlier someone claimed V16, and just a year before Dave Graham sent The Story of Two Worlds and subsequently downgraded most of Europe. One man who’s achievements suffered this trend was Bernd Zangerl, the protagonist of 2006’s Memento – A Boulder Lifeline.

This review is gonna start off pretty harsh, but I promise I’ll end on an upbeat note.

This film is largely the style over substance, aggrandizing, fluff piece, hour-long Red Bull ad that I can barely sit through. RedBull embroidered pants, hats, and requisite cans appear front and center. If its not the sponsor, there’s an excessive number of gratuitous glamor-shots of our shirtless hero. Its staggering how much not-climbing is crammed into 50 minutes of climbing film. The music flip flops between the sort played over corporate montages and the sort from edgy emo YouTube videos, but I will give credit that every track gets name/artist/label displayed onscreen ala MTV while it plays. Some boulders, but not all, are similarly given the respect of having thier names onscreen. When the climbing is actually on screen, much of the time its distorted with quick cuts, slow-motion, blur, and odd choices of lensing (fish-eye, not just for skate vids!). While I agree with much of Bernd’s voiceover, there’s far too much of it, and while I am willing to chalk some of the more cringeworthy lines up to lost-in-translation, there’s an excess of ego time to time.

That all said – some of the lines shown are outright gorgeous, and even if the lensing and angles are cherry-picked, some of them are proper exciting tall, especially over a single Franklin Dropzone. While Bernd’s lines are artistically (over) cut, climbers like Barbara “Babsi” Zangerl, Claudia Zangerl, Nicole Pompeing, and Angelika Streng have climbs show in single, continuous, tracking shots and they are beautiful and engaging. I tune out 90 percent of the voiceover, but some of it did stick with me; Bernd spends time talking about climbing in the shadow of Fred Nicole, about the consumption of the natural environment, and the mental state of bouldering. He and I ride the same wave-length there – bouldering is beautiful because you are trying so hard there’s no time to think, no contemplating, just do, only to come-to ontop the boulder. What more can you ask for?

Verdict: Skip It. I know, I ended on a high note, and this film has its moments, but they make up a frustratingly small percentage of the run time.