Review of Everest (2015) by Gangkutti — 17 Sep 2015

1996 - The deadliest year (19 fatalities) ever on Mount Everest during a trek, chronicled by writer Jon Krakaeur in "Into Thin Air". With 1 fatality for every four successful hikes to the summit, what does it take for one to dare into Mount Everest's "death zone". Man is it simple named that way? With low-oxygen and harsh and rapidly changing weather conditions, Director Baltasar Komakur provides us the ultimate experience and this is the closest most of us viewers are ever going to get to scaling the world's highest peak.

Rob (Jason Clarke) is the leader of an expedition guiding company called Adventure Consultants, specializing in commercial mountain climbing of Mount Everest. He leads eight of his clients to the summit. The director gives the viewers’ time to acclimate to the expedition group and the dangers involved, while the cast acclimate to the altitude and oxygen deprivation.

The entire crew and cast crew has done an excellent job in crafting and bringing to life this real-life disaster with an emotional consistency as well. Everest definitely dares you to imagine what it must be like to be at the top of the world with everything around going horribly, horribly wrong. With the fates of the different climbers unsure, Everest is nail-biting tense. But as the true consequences of the disaster becomes clear, that tension turns into grim sadness amid frozen corpses.

Everest boasts of a handful of spectacular shots that show how small the climbers are against the awe and majesty of Everest (definitely watch in IMAX if you can). Those shots are relatively scarce and one of the most effective uses of IMAX is when Beck slips while trying to cross a terrifyingly deep chasm over a wobbly ladder. Maybe if we experienced less of the climber's suffering and more of the mountain's majesty, their adventure would have been more inspiring.

While there are moments where the towering peak is overshadowed by the human dram, the viewers can forgive them in favor of the compelling experience of ascent and descent to the summit which is heaven for a moment and hell the next.