Perhaps the most surprising thing about Baltasar Kormakur’s Everest is that I watched it with a sense of fascination rather than
emotional engagement. This account of an
ill-fated expedition in 1996 to climb the world’s highest peak isn’t short on
drama and the stakes couldn’t be higher as every character contends with
life-and-death situations throughout.Â
Yet, I was strangely detached from their plight, more taken by the
film’s locale and the way it was rendered on screen. Filmed in the Italian Alps and Iceland and
presented in IMAX 3-D, Kormakur succeeds in recreating the danger of the
characters’ journey as the large screen format and depth of field technology gets
viewers as close to the mountain as possible without actually being there. To
be sure, this is quite a selling point where the movie is concerned; however,
it also proves to be a distraction from what should have been a compelling
screen adventure.Â
Kormakur gets us up to speed quickly in explaining that by
the mid-1990’s, Everest had become an overly commercialized location with 20
different expedition groups camped there, taking high-paying clients up to the
summit and back. Rob Hall (Jason Clarke)
runs Adventure Consultants and in late April of ’96, he sets out to take eight
clients to the top. Texas pathologist Beck
Weathers (Josh Brolin), mailman Doug Hansen (John Hawkes) and experienced
climber Yasoko Namba (Naoko Mori), who had reached the top of six of the
range’s Seven Summits, were among the group. That we get to know very little
about their personal lives (Beck’s marriage is falling apart, Hansen has failed
in two attempts to reach the top, etc.) and even less about the other five in
their party is the biggest fault in William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy’s
script.
Much of the film plays out like a procedural and it’s a
fascinating one at that. We’re shown the
extensive training each climber must go through, become familiar with the
stations and camps that must be reached before the final assault on the summit
and are versed on the physical dangers and worse-case scenarios the climbers
will and may face, all of which predictably play out. The final stage of the climb itself and the
perfect storm of circumstances that played out leading to the final disaster
are well-done and engaging as well, played out with passion by the cast and
photographed for maximum tension by Kormakur.
Yet, I felt a distinct lack of emotion once the characters
started meeting their frigid ends. The
fact that the film is too crowded contributes to this as not only do we have
Hall and his climbers, but his and Weathers’ wives (Keira Knightley & Robin
Wright), a rival expedition led by hotshot climber Scott Fischer (Jake
Gyllenhaal), concerned folks at basecamp (Emily Watson & Sam Worthington)
and writer Jon Krakauer (Michael Kelly) all jostling for screen time. As such,
no one’s given time enough for us to make an emotional connection with, while
their motivation for climbing remains murky, mentioned only in cursory fashion.
No, the real stars here are the mountain and the
format. Without question, Everest was
made to be seen on the biggest screen possible and can only be truly
appreciated in that way. The sense of
isolation and vertigo created by the panoramic shots and 3-D process are
spectacular and palpable. It could be
argued that Kormakur did his job too well, as his technique ends up
overshadowing the human element in this thrilling but somewhat empty movie.Â
This article appears in Sep 24-30, 2015.
