Notes

* AgonyOfTheFeet: While tumbling down the mountain side, Harrer ends up with his crampons stuck in his lower calf. He hides it from everyone else in fear of being eliminated from the expedition and then bleeds profously when saving Aufschnaiter few scenes later. He has a limp for rest of the expedition.
* AmbitionIsEvil:
** The film introduces Heinrich Harrer, the main character, as an egocentric asshole and bona fide jerk, running solely on ego and ambition to be the first man that climbs Nanga Parbat.
** The Chinese methodically keep stroking personal ambitions of [[spoiler: Ngapoi Ngawang Jigme, until [[TheQuisling he eventually switches sides]] and lets them take over Tibet with minimal military resistance]].
* AnachronismStew: Sten gun shows up in India, few years before it was even produced.
* ArtisticLicenseGeography: It's very obviously ''not'' Nanga Parbat's peak shown when the expedition starts descending after failing to reach it.
* ArtisticLicenseHistory:
** On personal level, details from Harrer's life are reshuffled out of order and ''heavily'' dramatised.
** The film merges Kuomingtang (Nationalist) Chinese diplomatic mission with a communist one, serving an ubiquitous "China". To put that into perspective, it's like trying to portray [[UsefulNotes/WestGermany West]] and UsefulNotes/EastGermany as one and the same, because they have "Germany" in the name.
** The communists apparently instantly take over the moment [=WW2=] ended, rather than being embroiled in the [[UsefulNotes/ChineseCivilWar reignited civil war]] with the Nationalists.
** Real-life battle of Chamdo was a series of protracted skirmishes going for few weeks. The film potrays it as a CurbStompBattle betweeen [=WW2-era=] troops and a handful of shepherds armed with bows.
* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: After starving for over a year and living like a vagabound beggar, during the tailoring measurement scene, Harrer just looks like Brad Pitt at his youthful, muscled prime. Keep in mind he was stealing dog food just few scenes prior to sustain himself.
* {{Brownface}}: Happens in-universe. The escape plan from the internment camp relies on heavy use of brown shoeshine paste and native garb.
-->[Blond haired, blue eyed Harrer looks at the pile of costumes and the shoeshine]
-->Heinrich: [uninpressed] This is your plan? In my humble opinion, this is ridiculous.
* ChekhovsGun: The photo of Dalai Lama, given to him as a lucky talisman, actually does save Harrer's skin. When caught by a military patrol, rather than getting into trouble, he's simply escorted back to the Tibetan border, while the commander of the patrol is in turn given the photo.
* ClothingDamage: Years of walking through mountainous wilderness will do wonder to your already old clothes. By the time Harrer and Aufschnaiter finally reach Tibet, they are wearing half-torn rags.
* DeadSparks: The Harrers marriage is pretty much a formality - Heinrich is clearly not interested with his wife, and she cheats on him the second he leaves Austria.
* DearJohnLetter: While in the internment camp, Harrer receives a letter from his wife with divorce papers.
* DogFoodDiet: Heinrich and Peter try to shoo a dog away from its bowl once reaching Lhasa and get caught eating its food.
* EarWorm: The tune played by the music box (Debussy's ''Clair de Lune'') catches attention of various characters.
* ExactWords:
-->'''[[spoiler: Ngapoi Jigme]]:''' Rest assured, there will be no surrender as long as I am in Chamdo.
-->[The very next shot is him riding away from the fortress, [[spoiler: after setting on fire the ammo supply]]]
* TheFriendNobodyLikes: It's hard to even call Harrer a friend. Both he and the other expedition members feel simply stuck with each other, while he's egocentric, stuck-up and deliberately distances himself from the rest of the group. For their part, their grudgingly accept his presence, but see and eventually comment on all his personal flaws. This eventually leads a boiling point much later in the story, when once in Tibet Heinrich sells Peter's memento watch and [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech gets chewed up for all his flaws and particularly the egoism]].
* ForegoneConclusion:
** The first ''hour'' of the movie suffers greatly from this trope, since viewers know from the get-go that Harrer will end up in Tibet, making any sort of dramatic build-up completely moot.
** Tibet will be taken over by the communist China.
* ForeignQueasine: The classic: Tibetan tea, served with yak's milk and butter, drink when cold, just before the fat starts to solidify. It is widely considered to be one of the most disgusting drinks in existence, and the film uses it for comedic purposes.
* GreatEscape: Harrer tries again and again to run away from the internment camp. He only succeeds [[IneffectualLoner when backed by the rest of his expedition]].
* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: [[spoiler: Ngapoi Ngawang Jigme]] was a very complex character, with nuanced stance over Chinese control over Tibet and at his worst could be considered a TragicMonster. The film portrays him as an ambitious, self-serving TheQuisling, that knowingly doomed his own country and its culture for personal profit.
* IHatePastMe: Once the communists start pushing toward Tibet, Harrer comments how he dislike the fact he once was supporting [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany a military regime]] trying to overpower weaker nations.
* IneffectualLoner: First half of the movie is an extensive study of Harrer's ineffectuality due to being a self-centered jerk. He would rather sit on his own than get familiar with the other expedition members and stays away of them for their most time together. You know, the people his life depends on when climbing. The ineffectual part is especially obvious during GreatEscape part of the film: Heinrich escaped on his own at least four times, but always got caught soon after. Meanwhile the other members of the expedition spend quile some time preparing an extensive escape plan, with supplies for the journey. When Harrer succeeds with them, he ditches them, only to soon after get into trouble ''anyway'' and is saved by Peter.
* {{Infodump}}: Numerous, just to make sure that [[ViewersAreMorons the audience understands each and every aspect of the story]]. A more notable case is when Diki Tsering, Dalai Lama's mother, explains to Harrer all the official protocol regarding interactions with her son, [[ChekhovsLecture which is important later on in the scenes with the Chinese]].
* ItsAllAboutMe: Harrer starts the story as a massive prick. He ditches his wife expecting a childbirth to go on his dream tour to Himalayas and acting out on her for nagging him. Later, he sells a personal object of another expedition member for chump change, despite ''not even having to'', and then lashes on someone's sentimental atatchment. And when eventually reaching Tibet, he's mostly interested with his personal well-being for quite a while.
* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: Not so much as leaning as directly talking to the audience.
-->Do you think someday people will look at Tibet on the movie screen and wonder what happened to us?
* NationalStereotypes: It's a Hollywood film about an Austrian mountain climber. Of course you will eventually get someone wearing lederhosen.
* NotWhatItLooksLike: Once under the care of Ngapo Jigme, Heinrich and Peter are visited by a young, good looking woman that instantly orders them to undress. Thinking their host send them an escort, they get really awkward about it. Pema eventualy catches the wind of it and explains that she's a ''seamstress'', and she needs their measurements if she's supposed to provide them with Western-style clothes that Jigme wanted to gift them.
* OutOfFocus: Every other expedition member that isn't Heinrich or Peter. Good luck even remembering their names.
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Harrer is on receiving end of ''four'' of those, as it takes him forever to accept that he's a deeply flawed man
** The letters he receives from his [[DearJohnLetter wife]] and [[YouAreNotMyFather son]] are essentially those: they are completely fed up by his antics and don't want to have anything to do with him.
** Peter delivers a vicious one after Heinrich [[RageBreakingPoint sold his memento watch]], despite having an entire can of watches for barter, calling him out of his self-importance and being a massive tool that's his worst own enemy. If not the fact they are stuck together, he would just abandon Harrer here and there.
** Pema chews him out for his clumsy attempts to first court her and then trying to [[GreenEyedMonster put a wedge between her and Peter]]. This one is the point where it finally sinks to him what sort of asshole he is.
** And finally, a far more subtle one is delivered by the young Dalai Lama, as he simply reminds Harrer that he's not his son and he shouldn't treat him as a ReplacementGoldfish for Rolf.
* RefugeInAudacity: The escape plan from the internment camp relies on dressing up as native workers and British officers, then ''[[RightUnderTheirNoses walk straight through the main gate]]'' when the actual Brit on the post is distracted by a fake message. Aufschnaiter goes as far as pointing at a dirorderly uniform of one of the sentries, [[BavarianFireDrill asking him to sort it out]].
* ReplacementGoldfish: After being divorced by his wife and [[YoureNotMyFather denounced]] by his son, Harrer ends up "parenting" Dalai Lama and the film isn't subtle about it. Eventually the boy has to remind Heinrich that he's not his son nor ever considered him a father figure, so he shouldn't be overstressing about him, but instead try to reach out to Rolf, his real son.
* SheCleansUpNicely: Gender flipped. Both men look ''much'' better once cleaned, shaved and re-dressed from their beggar garb into new set of clothes.
* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: The story takes a variety of artistic licenses when it comes to geography, history, medicine or even alpine climbing, but when Harrer steals stale food from a temple altar, he ends up with a (near fatal) food poisoning.
* TranslationConvention:
** [[JustAStupidAccent English with "Austrian" accent]] is used for in-universe German.
** English for whatever language that is spoken and understood by Harrer.
** A truly weird thing happens with writing. All letters and Heinrich's journal are in German... but the note he left [[spoiler: with the watch for Peter]] is in English.
* ViewersAreMorons: As opposed to ''Film/{{Kundun}}'', this film tries to over-explain everything, often leading to random {{Infodump}}s peppering the dialogues in a very blatant way.
* VoiceoverLetter: How Harrer's journal and letters to Rolf are presented. Bits of it (not all) are lifted verbatim from the souce book.
* WhiteMaleLead: While telling the story of Tibetan subjegation, it centers on Heinrich Harrer and his personal life, rather than the grand history that he's witnessing. To make it stand out some more, Harrer and Aufschnaiter were the ''only'' white people in the whole country, and yet the story is told from their perspective.
* WorstAid: The way how Harrer treats his wound woud lead, in his condition and location, to a severe frostbite and would quickly require an amputation.
* YoureNotMyFather: Young Rolf eventually is so fed up with Harrer's letters, he sends him his first and final reply - in which he tells him to stop, signing the letter with his step-father's surname.

first half of the film has jack-shit to do with the plot, do you even remember there were other expedition members after certain point?

too important to walk: duh

desperately looking for purpose: harrer, once out of camp, realises he has nothing to do and nowhere to go, so he doesn't plan to go back to austria

snark to snark combat: peter and heinrich do not gel well, and their only drop their differences on in tibet

while harrer is ignorant, peter learned tibetan in internment in preparation to his trek

ignorant foreign tourist: they deliberately play this up, pretending they don't understand the tibetan border patrol

value dissonance/culture clash:

** hand-clapping as a way of fending off evil

** ego-trip vs. buddhism

** worms in the ground when digging

indy ploy: they trick their guards to wear crampons, then they run the hell away

the shangri la: dear god, how pretentious it is when the letter to rolf is narrated

darkest hour: alone, without supplies, with their horse dead

as long as it sounds foreign: in-universe, a med kit inventory list is used as a "permit" to go to lhasa

green eyed monster: oh yes; pema even chews harrer over this

* constantly curious: dalai lama is a kid, after all

catapult nightmare: chinese invasion as a dream, anyone? culminates with a monk shooting his own teacher

maybe magic, maybe mundane: the dream about chinese invasion wasn't just a nightmare

* mighty whitey: invoked and in the same time downplayed; heinrich and peter are two white guys that understand and know western world, which means they have basic understanding of its affairs and that's what's needed, when suddenly asked about army and military affairs, they exchange confused looks. irl they were respectively a geographer (heinrich) and agronomist (peter)

-->don't you have all the answers, henry?

-->no, i don't.

as you know: the lecture on importance of chamdo

--> if i did not know that, i would not have been appointed governor

** then the information why destruction of ammo supply was so devastating

curb-stomp battle: the dramatised battle of chamdo

the quisling: Ngawang Jigme

going native: harrer, and especially peter





ymmv
* AdaptationDisplacement: The filns is a (rather loose) adaptation of Harrer's autobiographic book, that got completely eclipsed - to the point new editions are using film's poster as a cover.
* CriticalDissonance: While the critics were less than impressed, giving lukewarm reviews, audiences were far more interested and forgiving, for the exact same reason that turned off the professional critics: it's a very easy and upfront story to digest. So while Metacritic reports mixed reviews from critics, Cinemascore ranks the film as [=A/A+=] when it comes to audience reactions.
* HilariousInHindsight:
** Brad Pitt's ''terrible'' attempt at foreign accent is funny by itself, but a decade later ''Film/InglouriousBasterds'' used it directly for comedic purposes.
** The curse of long life, made up for the film? Real Ngapoi Jigme (already 87 when the film premiered) died in 2009, missing his 100th birthday by two months.
* SignatureScene: The scene of a young monk being forced to shoot his master is easily the most iconic part of the film and managed to easily outlive any memory of the film. Ironically, people often mis-attribute it to ''Film/{{Kundun}}''.



trivia
* CaliforniaDoubling: Argentinian Andes for the Himalayas and Argentina in general for everything else. Said that, over 20 minutes of footage were secretly filmed in Tibet, without any approval of the Chinese authorities, which only further added to the post-release scandal and Sony's troubles with Chinese ban on ''all'' of their movies.
* MoneyDearBoy: Disliking the script and the project as a whole, when asked to star in it, Creator/BradPitt demanded to be paid 8 million dollars upfront, as a way to get rid of the producers. Much to his surprise, [=TriStar=] Pictures and Sony Pictures execs agreed, so he decided to take the part, given the crazy amount of money offered. His paycheck made more than 10% of the entire production budget.
* RealLifeRelative: Jetsun Pema is real-life sister of the 14th Dalai Lama. In the film she plays their own mother.
* UnderageCasting: Creator/DavidThewlis was already few years younger than Peter Aufschnaiter in 1939 (the year the film opens in), but as the story progress, almost 15 years pass in the background. His character doesn't age in any visible way, with a 30-something evnetually potraying a man in his 50s.
* FakeNationality:
** An American and a Brit playing a duo of Austrians. Creator/DavidThewlis doesn't even try to hide his native accent, while Brad Pitt utterly fails at [[JustAStupidAccent "Austrian"]]
** Numerous extras are from Argentina. Including the ones that play ''Chinese'' soldiers.


"introducting" credits

vanity project - for director

what could have been: about 20 minutes of location shots are actual footage from tibet - annaud made it only open two years after premiere. the film crew being caught would end up creating a far, far bigger problem than simply making a movie about dalai lama

enforced method acting: When Heinrich confronts Ngawang, the director didn't tell BD Wong that the script called for Brad Pitt to throw him into the dirt. Wong's reaction is completely authentic.



Pema Lhaki