Universal Pictures
Watching the movie Everest, you can’t help but think to ask that age old question about climbing the infamous mountain: Why? Why, knowing the extreme danger involved, would you ever want to risk death just for the thrill of going to the highest point on earth? And after seeing the movie dramatize what happened to several teams of climbers on a harrowing day in 1996, you’d have to be even crazier to consider scaling that summit. But people will still try simply “because it’s there.”
Everest focuses on several competing teams of climbers with Rob Hall’s (Jason Clarke) Adventure Consultants the focal point. Hall had been an experienced climber who led several teams to the summit, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. But knowing that people are willing to pay a huge sum to stake their claim on the top of the mountain, he offered them the expedition of a lifetime with as much training and preparation as possible to make the journey as safe as possible. His success led to several competing adventure companies to start their own expeditions to the summit, often staking out the same date to ascend the mountain as Hall’s company.
As we join Hall’s team, including Andy “Harold” Harris (Martin Henderson), Doug Hansen (John Hawkes), Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin), Yasuko Namba (Naoko Mori), who had already climbed six of the seven summits, and author John Krakauer (Michael Kelly), who joined the expedition to document it for an Outside magazine article (and would expand that article into the bestseller Into Thin Air upon which the film is based along with Weathers’ Left For Dead), they are spending several weeks acclimatizing themselves to the harsh conditions on Everest, including the lack of oxygen. Like Hall explains to them, the body literally begins to die at what it the cruising altitude for a 747. Even the training is rigorous for most of them, leading to altitude sickness and weakness, but they all soldier through in the hopes that Hall’s lucky day, May 10, will be lucky for them all.
As fate would have it, a massive storm is heading their way and with three separate teams all jockeying to ascend on May 10th, including Hall’s rival Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhall), a truce is proposed that would allow all the teams to work together to get their clients to the summit with a turnaround time of 2:00 PM so as to be back at camp before the storm hits. Fischer agrees and with some tense moments, the third team also agrees to share the duties of stashing reserve oxygen ahead of the climbers and securing the proper ropes to help them get to the summit. Of course, not everything goes to plan and the teams are delayed due to the ropes not being properly secured. To make matters even more urgent, there are no full oxygen bottles at the ready. The teams forge ahead and make it to the top, but miss their time frame and tragedy strikes in the form of a horrific snowstorm. As with another true-life tragedy, The Perfect Storm, we already know that many of the climbers will not return from the summit.
Everest, the film, has its pros and cons. On the plus side, the film looks absolutely spectacular on the huge IMAX screen and the 3D process will give those with a fear of heights more than a few bouts of vertigo as the camera shoots down the sides of the mountain. There isn’t any in your face effects, but the depth of the process gives you a real sense of being there. If you can see it in IMAX 3D, that is the way to go.
Director Baltasar Kormákur handles all of the action and location shooting extremely well, making most of the ascent to the summit very believable (although eagle-eyed viewers will easily pick out scenes that are obviously shot on a soundstage). The film, however, did use real locations in Nepal and Italy, and working in those elements with hundreds of people is no easy task. Kormákur gets major props for keeping things together. While the climbing and descent scenes are harrowing, one of the most breathtaking moments occurs during an attempted helicopter rescue that had me gripping the arm rests of my seat.
Speaking of hundreds of people, the film’s biggest flaw is its huge cast. With the focus being on Hall’s team, we never really get to know anyone on Fischer’s team or the third teams of climbers, and we barely get more than character sketches of the members of Hall’s team. We know Yasuko has climbed six summits, we know Weathers snuck off on the expedition without telling his wife, we know Hansen has made the trip before but never made it to the top and he says this is his last attempt, but we don’t know why. He appears to be ill, but that could just be the altitude, and Hall gave him a discount so he could make the climb again. We know Krakauer is there to write an article about Hall (and apparently he was originally supposed to write about Fischer), but there are not many details about these character sketches, so when tragedy does strike it’s hard to be emotionally involved in their plight. The focus seems to be more on Hall and the spectacle of it all, trying to make the climb and the storm as realistic as possible.
Thankfully there is a woman on the team because the rest of the film’s female characters are reduced to sitting around and worrying, from base camp leaders Helen Wilton (Emily Watson) and Caroline Mackenzie (Elizabeth Debicki) to Weathers’ barely there wife back in Texas (played by Robin Wright in a bad wig), to Hall’s pregnant (of course) wife Jan Arnold (Keira Knightly) who gets to wait by the phone and do a lot of crying. But, since this is based on a true story and personal accounts from those who were there and the families of those who did not return (who have worked closely with the filmmakers), you can’t fault them too much even if it does seem a little too stereotypical. And Sam Worthington pops up later in the film (after being barely glimpsed at the airport at the beginning of the movie) as Guy Cotter, who is keeping tabs on Hall’s group from a different summit but also ends up back at base camp worrying and coordinating the rescue attempts and phone calls between Hall and his wife.
But, Everest is still a magnificent technical achievement even if the characters are as thinly drawn as the air on the mountain, and should be used as a training film for why you shouldn’t climb something just because it’s there.
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