EVEREST--The World's Tallest Mountain...And The Most Unforgiving, As Well

Rating: 10/10 (25 September 2015)

No mountain on Earth is taller than Mount Everest. Straddling the border between Nepal and China, in the Himalayas, it rises to a height of 29,028 feet above sea level, near the median height of where most commercial aircraft actually fly, and is perpetually covered in snow and ice even in the summer. While expeditions have tried to reach this lofty summit from either side, it was Edmund Hillary and his Nepalese sherpa climber Tenzing Norgay that made the first successful ascent to and descent from the Everest massif. Since then, dozens upon dozens of expeditions have made the trek up this dangerous mountain; and of all of them, an average of one out of four people have perished. One such incident that caused the deaths of several climbers was one that occurred on May 11, 1996, and which had been documented by Jon Krakauer, one of the participants in that ascent/descent of Everest, in his book "Into Thin Air". That same incident (though not adapted from that book) is also depicted in the 2015 film EVEREST.
Filmed in IMAX 3-D, the film involves the group of expeditionaires, led by Rob Hall (Jason Clarke), who made the trek up the southeast slope of the mountain during what was, relatively speaking, the best time of the year, mid-spring. But Everest is not exactly a forgiving mountain, not in the ascent and certainly not on the descent, even in the best of conditions, because, even with base camps scattered along the approach, the air becomes considerably thinner as the altitude increases, and the weather can change sometimes within a matter of hours, if indeed not minutes. This is what the 1996 expedition, which included Krakauer (here portrayed by John Kelly), encountered. While many of them manage to get to the 29,028-foot summit with its icy, top-of-the-world view, on the way down, a monsoonal storm roars in off of the Indian Ocean and, as it ascends the Himalayas, envelopes the expeditionaires in an epic blizzard two thousand feet below the summit. Frantic efforts to rescue everyone, including an ambitious Texas climber (Josh Brolin), end in a wash; and by the time all is said and done, eight of them have died on the mountain, two of whose bodies are never recovered. Clarke is among those eight fatalities.
Icelandic director Baltasar Kormakur, working from an original screenplay by William Nicholson (GLADIATOR) and Simon Beaufoy (127 HOURS), shot a great deal of Everest in the Italian Alps, as well as on-location scenes in Nepal, not far from where the real Mount Everest is. In doing so, he captured a great deal of the sub-zero cold, treacherous climbing and weather conditions, and the frequent instability of the mountain itself (huge avalanches caused by the weight of thousands of tons of snow piled on). Actors like Brolin, Jake Gyllenhaal, Sam Worthington, and John Kelly (the latter portraying Krakauer) do a great deal of depicting the cockiness of their real-life counterparts prior to the start of the expedition, a cockiness that soon gives way to a stoicism amidst a very nightmarish white reality when the weather turns deadly just below the top of the world. In complete contrast to many previous films of this sort, there is no attempt by either Kormakur, Nicholson, or Beaufoy to melodramatize or make this story more exciting according to Hollywood standards; the facts themselves, and the physical details of the thing are plenty exciting enough, and, above all else, frequently terrifying.
Just the physical attributes of this film alone, not just in the ascent and descent but also in the frequent changes in the mountain's stability, and the often crazy weather that can envelope both it and those that climb it, is enough to make EVEREST one of the most challenging and grueling films of any kind made so far in the 21st century. Instead of just being another high-octane action thriller with a lot of explosions and migraine-inducing sound-and-fury, EVEREST is a hugely entertaining and incisive docudrama, and one of the best films of 2015.