Peak Hours
If you've dismissed Everest, sight unseen, as a disaster-porn summer hold-over, please ignore your justifiable skepticism and buy tickets for the next 3D/IMAX showing. Frequent readers know that I'm often first on the anti-up-charge bandwagon, but Baltasar Kormákur's take on a doomed 1996 expedition up one of the world's tallest mountains is another gem in 2015's crown of must-see theatrical experiences. Like Mad Max: Fury Road and Inside Out, it's a star-studded, mega-budget feat of big-studio filmmaking that's also a subversive and keenly introspective commentary on the human ego. Unless your home theatre setup involves a drive-in screen and an active fault line, there's simply no excuse to wait.
The story follows Rob Hall (Jason Clarke), the founder of a company called Adventure Consultants, which guides amateur climbers. Once a wide-open industry, competition has reached a choke point, and Everest opens with Hall snatching a high-profile magazine cover story from his chief rival, Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal). He welcomes the author (Michael Kelly) onto his next expedition, in the hopes that a compelling account will boost Adventure Consultants' flagging membership. Right off the bat, Kromakur and screenwriters William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy add a second layer of life-or-death struggle to the crew's month-and-a-half-long ordeal.
We meet everyone in the manner of a Michael Bay film: small groups travelling through exotic locales shot with tourist-bureau allure, meeting up in a larger collective to share their elevator-pitch bios and get a mission de-brief. Josh Brolin is the tough Texan in a Dole/Kemp '96 t-shirt. John Hawkes is the divorced mail carrier who wants to set an example for his kids. Naoko Mori is the adventurer who's climbed six of the world's seven tallest mountains. Toss in a brewing conspiracy driven by greed that could put everyone's lives in danger, and the stage is set for a conventional blockbuster whose only innovations lie in the special-effects and stunt departments.
These early hints at a well-worn narrative quickly fall by the wayside. The competing teams both want to reach Everest's peak on a specific date, and they decide to work together in order to streamline communications and prevent chaos on the mountain. The filmmakers do a great job establishing the inherent dangers in the job, mostly centering on the scarce oxygen levels at the higher altitudes, during a fascinating training montage that comprises the film's first half-hour. We accompany Hall and Fischer's teams as they strategically place oxygen containers, ladders, and ropes to help combat the possibility that the less-experienced climbers might face everything from visual impairment to dementia to good old-fashioned fear at the most inopportune times. As it turns out, reaching the peak (which many of our protagonists do about half-way through the film) isn't nearly as complicated as getting down--especially when a major storm suddenly changes course and settles in over Everest.
Kormákur doesn't rely on spectacle to thrill us. Cinematographer Salvatore Totino and the digital effects artists work in concert to (mostly) effectively blend shot-on-location landscapes with sound stage green-screen, providing the audience with several dazzling shots from the climbers' perspectives. The result is an immersive visual metaphor for our collective egos: though Hall and company know they are still several thousand feet from their objective, the peak doesn't look that far away. Combined with the severely bruised sense of self that likely accompanies turning back at the three-quarter mark, it's easy to understand why some would push ahead, often carelessly. There is great tension in rooting for certain members to throw in the towel, and the dread of watching others cope with their decisions.
The film's real hero is Jason Clarke. Turning in a performance that is strikingly natural for a high-profile, mainstream movie, his Rob Hall feels like a tribute to a flesh-and-blood human being--the kind people would entrust their lives with. As written and played here, Hall is a noble explorer who loves helping others realize their dreams. He's not an action hero. He gets scared, he gets lonely, and he needs a boost every now and then via sat-phone calls from his pregnant wife, Jan Arnold (Keira Knightley).* In a lesser movie, even one based on a true story, Hall's heroism would be absolute; he'd be the problem solver, the guy hoisting a stack of three buddies dangling over an abyss. Not here. Hall has a loyal, concerned support network back at Base Camp One, comprised of his business partner, the company doctor, and a colleague who came running when he saw the storm heading in (Emily Watson, Elizabeth Debicki, and Sam Worthington, respectively). Through it all, Clarke becomes the friend we want to help, instead of just an actor looking for another leading-man boost.
I have one major critique of Everest, a gut-punch of a shortcoming that kept this from being a 2015 favorite. Whether due to run-time constraints or just plain bad judgment, Kormákur and editor Mick Audsley drop the ball in three scenes--one innocuous, two essential and back-to-back. The first doesn't warrant a mention, since I can kind of understand how it makes sense. The last two are noteworthy but spoilerific, so I'll do my best to dance around them in my explication (if you want to steer clear entirely, skip to the last paragraph).
Following the training montage, much of Everest is told in a concise, straightforward time frame. We can easily follow night into day into night, and the filmmakers even provide time stamps for the critical legs of the mission. At the very end, though, one character is rescued from the mountain and then shows up back at home with his family two scenes later. By breaking their established time language so abruptly, Kormákur and Audsley give the impression that the character just showed up in his own driveway a few hours after being helicoptered to safety. Also, he apparently arrives by himself. Two problems there:
1. He'd suffered crippling injuries during his time on Everest, and would have been unable to get back to his house un-escorted.
2. An end-credits photo montage shows the real-life reunion, and there appear to have been, understandably, other people present for this news-worthy event. Everest's take on this moment is as puzzling a bit of low-key teleportation as Bruce Wayne's appearance in locked-down Gotham at the end of The Dark Knight Rises.
The second problem centers on a character death that coincides with the rescue. This victim knows he won't survive another night stranded on the mountain, as do all the parties talking to him over the radio. But the audience doesn't know that. This is a movie, after all, and movies (good ones, anyway) involve closure--be it the closure of watching a character die, the closure of watching the character triumph over death, or the closure of characters acknowledging impending doom and the camera and/or score doing the work of a proper send-off. Everest gives us neither, opting instead to cut to the rescue of the character I mentioned in the last paragraph, and then return to a shot of the doomed character's dead body--along with another time-jump to various grieving parties. For a film that wonderfully took its time in building relationships and perilous circumstances, the ending inexplicably falls off a cliff.
These are quibbles. I won't begrudge a movie five minutes out of nearly two hours. Everest is a solid character piece disguised as a barking-seal thriller. Like The Grey, it's sure to turn some people off with all its talking and Big Questions, but for the truly adventurous, Kormákur delivers an inspiring and enjoyable feast for the senses.
*It's no spoiler to say that Hall get stranded on the mountain, and that things look grim.