Everest (2015)
Certified: PG
Duration: 121 minutes
Directed by: Baltasar Kormákur
Starring: Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Robin Wright, Emily Watson, Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, Jake Gyllenhaal
KRS Releasing Ltd
The film recounts a tragedy that happened in 1996, when eight people were caught in a blizzard and died on Mount Everest during summit attempts. It was the worst disaster on the earth’s highest mountain until the 2014 avalanche.
In 1996, Rob Hall (Jason Clarke) sets out to climb Mount Everest. He is to lead a group made up of Jon Krakauer (Michael Kelly), who is a publisher and travel writer; Doug Hansen (John Hawkes), who works in the postal services; and Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin), a wealthy man from Texas, who has been climbing for 10 years.
Rob is to be helped by mountain climber Andy ‘Harold’ Harris (Martin Henderson) and Helen Wilton (Emily Watson), the base camp manager who is to keep constant contact with them.
When the climb starts, the harshness and danger of the environment soon kicks in.
Director Baltasar Kormákur’s greatest achievement is his depiction of the mountain as a primal force of nature. While Mount Everest has been scaled many a time, it still has that haunting and mythical power.
In fact, a sense of grandeur and a sense of man being dwarfed by nature pervades the film and indirectly shows why people would risk their life to climb it.
The film also gives importance to the thrill factor – making Everest alive in each and every moment.
The director also manages to place everything into perspective. The film builds its hand well, as the audience is involved in the preparations for the climb, the expectations and one starts to form his own queries about certain decisions.
The mountain climbers presented here are well defined and are very well balanced and they provide solid performances without any hysterics. They look like real people and that makes the film even more watchable and prestigious in its approach.
The events and the film also have a lot to say about the activity of climbing Everest and how it has become a commercial activity.
However, Kormákur’s mission is to tell a good story, place his audience on the edge and make Everest his centrepiece and as such he is not very much interested in delving into the controversies.
The environment up there is a harsh one to say the least, where oxygen is lacking, isolation is a fact and chaos seems to reign. Aided by Salvatore Totino’s beautiful cinematography, the environment becomes another living presence in the movie.
The result is a film about the age- old tug-of-war between man versus nature, about man’s continuous testing of his ability to survive.
Everest, which is meant to be seen on the big screen, emerges to be just that and more with its adrenaline rush.