Everest | Little White Lies

Ever­est

15 Sep 2015 / Released: 18 Sep 2015

Mountaineer in blue winter gear with beard and goggles, standing in snow-covered landscape.
Mountaineer in blue winter gear with beard and goggles, standing in snow-covered landscape.
2

Anticipation.

Baltasar Kormákur’s recent hack-for-hire work (Two Guns, Contaband) dulls the excitement somewhat.

4

Enjoyment.

A remarkable mountaineering melodrama rather than a standard-issue disaster movie.

3

In Retrospect.

Pardon our French, but this could easily turn out to be an Oscar dark horse.

This big, brassy 70s-style dis­as­ter movie wears its clichés light­ly and packs a hefty emo­tion­al punch.

It’s time we expunged all this hooey about the pur­port­ed Jake Gyl­len­haal renais­sance from our minds. We refer to the recent phase of his act­ing career where he stars in films in which he appears to be strain­ing way too hard for effect (cf Ene­my, Pris­on­ers, Night­crawler, South­paw). Bal­tasar Kormákur’s Ever­est is an ace, mer­ri­ly archa­ic dis­as­ter movie that Gyl­len­haal, in a weirdy-beardy lov­able rogue sup­port­ing role, appears to be treat­ing as one for them”.

He’s more laid back than usu­al, unself­con­sious, with no sign of deep method char­ac­ter immer­sion, or that he’s try­ing to sub­tly artic­u­late every­thing he’s feel­ing for the cam­era. And it’s his best work in a long time – the empa­thy for his char­ac­ter shines through effort­less­ly. Though this film deals quite lit­er­al­ly in the high­est of high dra­ma it’s an agree­ably mel­low explo­ration of when human life becomes the stake for wild phys­i­cal endeavour.

Jason Clarke, an actor whose rabbit/​headlights turns in jug­ger­naut block­buster fran­chis­es such as Ter­mi­na­tor Genisys and Dawn of the Plan­et of the Apes, comes into his own when asked to play a chip­per dullard. In this case, it’s com­mer­cial moun­taineer­ing guide Rob Hall, and the film, based on Jon Krakauer’s reportage best­seller, Into Thin Air’ as well as Beck Weath­ers’ Left for Dead: My Jour­ney Home from Ever­est’ and var­i­ous tran­scrip­tions of sat-phone record­ings, offers a retelling of the unfor­tu­nate events which occurred in May of 96.

With­out going into too much detail, it’s a sim­ple case of a cer­tain amount of peo­ple going up the moun­tain, and a dimin­ished num­ber being able to make their way down. The film expos­es a cer­tain futil­i­ty when it comes to work­ing in the extreme sports are­na, sug­gest­ing that guides, train­ers and experts are per­haps a lit­tle too casu­al with the poten­tial dan­gers of their cho­sen occu­pa­tion. They cel­e­brate life’s poten­tial by ner­vous­ly chest-bump­ing death right out of the frame.

There is, at times, the faint bou­quet of cheese, espe­cial­ly when over-eager side play­ers intone their earnest rea­sons for want­i­ng to con­quer the world’s high­est sum­mit and, often, con­cur­rent­ly sign­post­ing their own dim future. Yet Kormákur’s film – cer­tain­ly one of his best – does not play into the hands of drab con­ven­tion, offer­ing a detailed, near 80-minute build up to the even­tu­al fire­works, which pays huge div­i­dends when you’re actu­al­ly asked to wor­ry about the fate of these characters.

Where Ever­est works best is in its sim­ple deci­sion to set­tle its focus on the peo­ple rather than the dis­pas­sion­ate forces of nature. There is also no human antag­o­nist. The moun­tain is the cack­ling bad guy here. What we have are just ordi­nary peo­ple coerced into mak­ing life or death deci­sions in impos­si­ble cir­cum­stances, the dire con­se­quences of which are entire­ly unknown.

This is also a film about the 90s, about the rise of dude cul­ture and the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of (male-dom­i­nat­ed) extreme sports as suit­able for stocky busi­ness­men on the cusp of mid-life cri­sis (Josh Brolin), plucky post­men who have wast­ed their life in the ser­vice indus­try (John Hawkes) or gung-ho jour­nal­ists look­ing for their next rad lon­gread (Michael Kel­ly). Yet it’s the mater­nal­ly- mind­ed female char­ac­ters – from Keira Knightley’s house­bound wife to Emi­ly Wat­son and Eliz­a­beth Debick­i’s base­camp liaisons – who lend this tragedy its humane and heart­break­ing edge.

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