Everest (2015). A review

Steph P. Bianchini December 10, 2017 2 Comments

I found out about Everest (a 2015 British-American biographical adventure movie, directed and co-produced by Baltasar Kormákur) by chance when browsing Netflix’s adventure section. As I love extreme adventure movies, I decided to give it a shot. You should, too: differently from others of the same kind, this one is quite well done and accurate. Moreover, the story told here is not made up. It is one of the worst tragedies happened on this mountain, when, in 1996, eight people died caught by a blizzard on their way back from the summit. Another interesting detail is that among the ones that lost their life there were three quite experienced mountain guides and famous tour organisers, such as Rob Hall from Adventure Consultants.

I won’t talk too much here about the story (which is well known to anybody that follows mountaineering) here. What I would like to stress is that the movie makes a good job in maintaining an objective view of the facts and takes a step back from all the controversies the tragedy ignited -responsibilities, poor planning, competitions among the teams, and the concept itself of commercial expeditions to such challenging peaks. I had this impression as I first watched the movie, and it was confirmed when I read the (many) books by some of the people that have taken part at various titles to it (I’ll talk about them in another post).

Last but not the least, there are some great shots of the mountain itself, and actors such as Sam Worthington (Avatar), contributing to make this one a movie definitively worth watching. As the NYT reviewer said about it “Mr Kormakur, an Icelandic director whose films include “Jar City” and “2 Guns,” hits his stride once the preliminary conversations and expository scenes give way to practical decisions and perilous mishaps. As his camera swoops down on the climbers from above — and, on a few vertiginous occasions, from below — you feel some of the grandeur and terror of their undertaking. They are small, slow-moving creatures, their bright-coloured gear vivid and incongruous amid the sparkling whites and swirling grays of snow, cloud and wind. Their progress is gruelling and slow, but Mr Kormakur generates suspense through deft crosscutting and an accelerating sense of doom.” (Read the full review).

Here’s the trailer: