It was the worst disaster on the earth’s highest mountain until the 2014 avalanche. As to why they do is beyond me, and director Baltasar Kormákur’s “Everest” doesn’t focus too much on trying to find answers either. John Hawkes’ Doug is a mailman whose explanation for why he’s on this climb is the only moment when we get anything beyond, “Because it’s there”.
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Josh Brolin plays headstrong climber from Texas, Beck Weathers – all geared up to summit. For tiny, adorable Yasuko Namba (Naoko Mori), it’s something deep and spiritual. With the presence of highly-regarded author Jon Krakauer (Michael Kelly) on Hall’s expedition to document the experience for hopefully solid publicity, the two guides decide to work together to take their teams step-by-step to the summit. Eight of the climbers traveling are killed during the storm and some are fatally injured.
With a screenplay of prophetic peril crafted by two Academy Award-nominated screenwriters, William Nicholson of “Gladiator” and Simon Beaufoy of “Slumdog Millionaire“, Kormakur’s film plays it straight with the facts and requires swallowing fewer grains of salt than most other disaster films. If the theaters cranked the AC down to 10 degrees, you’d feel like you’re on the mountain with them, especially when the skin-rippling winds thunder through the Dolby speakers. You could still die up there.
“As you move up the mountain there’s a mix of footage we shot, film footage in 2004; there’s a mix of what we call plates, high-resolution background images; and there’s a mix of some computer generated images”. All that said, if there was ever a movie to see in IMAX 3D, I think Everest just might be that movie.
“Everest” is an honest portrayal of adventure, the pursuit of glory and tragic loss. The plot is interesting-all or most characters have one goal to achieve, to reach the summit-which proves to be a deathly challenge. One got a similar feeling watching the 1998 IMAX documentary, also titled Everest, but Kormákur’s movie places you not just on the mountain but inside a story, inside characters’ heads and inside human bodies as oxygen levels drop and extremities freeze. And then there are Hall’s coworkers at Adventure Consultants (Emily Watson and Elizabeth Debicki), who are repeatedly seen fretting and crying back at base camp. The other thing that’s real, most of the time, is the mountain. Hit by a severe blizzard the audience is left reeling in awe and fear of Mother Nature, as the movie details how the climbers must have felt as they realised their lives were hanging on a thin line.
In a scene early on, Krakauer asks a dinner table surrounded by mountaineers the very same question we all have for those who make this life-threatening trek: “Why?” I loved the experience, but hated the execution.
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The events and the film also have a lot to say about the activity of climbing Everest and how it has become a commercial activity. The film will keep viewers on the edge of their seats and wondering why people risk it all to reach to the top of the world. Hall’s business partner Helen Wilton (Oscar nominee Emily Watson) is the den mother that runs base camp and radio communication and Keira Knightley and Robin Wright play two of the waiting-and-worrying wives back home.
