Everest (2015)

by Luke Rajczuk

Mount Everest – 8,848m high and ‘the roof of the world’. Located in Nepal also called Sagarmāthā or Chomolungma by Tibetans. Scores of climbers attempt to reach the summit every year and for what? Endless and masochistic human desire to conquer! Conquer fear; compete with others and oneself at a time, indeed and in his biographical film Everest director Baltasar Kormákur depicts just the aforementioned. What is the true measure of the cost and risk involved?

                 All human unhappiness comes from not facing reality squarely, exactly as it is.

                                                                                                                      Buddha

This film is fairly well shot and doesn’t make it easy for the viewer to distinguish which bits of the treacherous landscape are ‘studio’ and which for real.

On the 10^th of May 1996 two expeditions are trying to reach the Earth’s highest, Himalayan peak enduring extreme weather and one of the toughest blizzards ever experienced. It turns into a battle between a human and nature where thin air, freezing winds and low temperatures take its toll.

The film features Jason Clarke (Zero Dark Thirty) as the main character and mountain guide Rob Hall. Not a bad performance given the amount of facial expressions’ drama required to show how a man without oxygen feels at approx. 8K meters above the see level. Rather pale performance from Thomas M. Wright (The Bridge) as Michael Groom but kudos goes to Ang Phula Sherpa, who jumps into the character of a Nepali mountaineering guide (Sherpa) Ang Dorje.

The picture is a tribute to all those who lost their lives in the Himalayas.