The Ascent (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #37 extract: The Ascent (1977)

The Ascent is one of the most miserable and hopeless occupation films and, moreover, is one of the most difficult Christ allegories I've ever seen. There is then no sense of hope in this film, only an atmospheric cloud that hazes what we are urged to believe that some characters see to be a transcendent truth. For the fact that this truth, or any sense of meaning and direction, are shrouded so heavily, there is an intensely dark psychological realism imbued into every frame of this film, one that, as we can only imagine, captures the true struggle of the times depicted, and one that honestly captures the pitiful and the fallible spirit of its characters. 

Hypnotically sable, The Ascent is a film to behold.