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Jake Gyllenhaal finds Mt. Everest tougher than a host of paparazzi
BThe best cinematic portrayal of the ill-fated 1996 Mt. Everest expedition during which five climbers died unquestionably would have been a documentary. But since no documentary could adequately capture the actual conditions the climbers encountered, director Baltasar Kormakur‘s technically brilliant docudrama Everest provides a more than acceptable substitute.
Everest focuses on the expedition led by New Zealander Rob Hall (Jason Clarke), the man largely responsible for opening Everest up to wealthy amateur climbers seeking the ultimate adventure. Unlike some of his rival tour guides, including brash American Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal), Hall stresses safety and providing the optimum experience for his clients. Hall and Fischer actually team up eventually for the final climb. Both Hall and Fischer, along with some of their clients, make it to the summit, but a series of ill-advised decisions and some treacherous weather conditions catch up to them on the way down.
Technically, Everest is stunning, especially in 3D IMAX theaters. Kormakur skillfully mixes footage from Mt. Everest’s own slopes and camps, other location footage in the Italian Alps, and judicious, hard-to-detect CGI to capture the actual experience as much as possible. This thrilling realism comes at a price however, since much of it depicts climbers in heavy mountain gear. Audiences can see how they struggle physically but in many cases don’t even know who the individual climbers are. Of course, that confusion to a large extent matches the actual conditions on the mountain, but it doesn’t make for gripping individual drama. Nor does the screenplay help in that regard, since most of the climbers, including those portrayed by Josh Brolin and John Hawkes are only in Everest for their historical significance. As characters, they are pretty much one-dimensional non-entities. However, audiences do get a good understanding of just why and how things went wrong for the expedition, and a final telephone conversation between Rob Hall and his pregnant wife (Keira Knightley) at home delivers an emotional wallop, more so because it actually happened. By the movie’s end, the sheer spectacle and treachery of Mt. Everest itself and the technical wizardry of the film crew overcome the weakness of the plot, and the result is the best depiction we’re ever likely to see of man’s struggle to reach the top of the world.
Continue reading on Everest: Mini-review
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