‘Everest – is the most dangerous place on earth.’
The events of May 1996 have been told and retold through biography, photography and documentary. September 2015 saw the release of Baltasar Kormákur’s directorial retelling of a team of climbers in their attempt to conquer the highest peak in the world. Amongst its cast are Josh Brolin, Keira Knightley and Robin Wright, but it is Everest itself that maintains centre stage. Visually impressive and engrossing, the film clearly displays human approaches to creation, beauty and achievement.
Commercial expeditions
The film quickly conveys the frenzy caused by the rise of commercial expeditions to the summit, with Jason Clarke playing Rob Hall, the founder of Adventure Consultants, and Jake Gyllenhaal playing Scott Fischer, the founder of Mountain Madness. These guided expeditions offered amateur climbers the equipment and expertise they would require to achieve the extraordinary task of reaching the top of Everest – and returning home from it. Depicting vastly differing approaches, the first obvious contrast is in the leadership styles of Hall and Fischer. Hall is diligent, conscientious and self-sacrificial, while Fischer takes a more relaxed approach, frequently drunk and lacking respect for the terrible magnificence of the mountain.
‘We don’t need competition between people; there is competition with the mountain. The mountain always has the last word.’ As the team begin their ascent, we come to know a little about each of them. John Krakauer is a journalist on a project, Doug is a mailman wanting to inspire children in his hometown, Beck is an arrogant Texan. So arrogant, in fact, that at several points he puts the rest of the team in danger in order to protect his pride. Later on, Beck reveals his struggle with depression, and says ‘being out on the mountain is a cure. This is real suffering’. A fellow climber responds: ‘a few more days of suffering and you’ll be a man who’s climbed Everest.’ Something about the physical endurance and battling against the climate has given Beck a rebirth on the mountainside. Later in the film, when he is presumed dead, he experiences a resurrection moment. Visions of his wife and children, bathed in golden sunlight, beckon him up off the snow and back to life. They emanate warmth and have become to him more compelling than Everest, which enticed with, but turned deathly in, its majesty.
Rare beauty
What has brought this varied group together at such high personal, relational and material cost? ‘To see the kind of beauty no one else sees’, answers Doug, whose wife divorced him because of his commitment to climbing. This greedy anticipation of beholding for oneself the rare kind of beauty the summit of Everest offers seems to justify the great personal cost involved in scaling the mountain. The compelling power of promised beauty seduces the climbers to continue beyond reason and into mortal danger, as an approaching ice storm reduces the timescale during which they can safely complete the climb.
Idol of the heart
In the pre-expedition briefing in a bar in Nepal, the Adventure Consultants climbing team are instructed by Rob Hall that above a certain altitude their bodies will ‘quite literally be dying’. He concludes with the foreboding direction for the team to ‘drink, be merry – tomorrow we climb’. This powerful play-on-words with the famous phrase that conflates a couple of Bible verses works on two levels. The first is the obvious shadow of peril it casts over the impending expedition. The second is the recognition of Everest being the idol of the climbers’ hearts – they live for the moment of reaching the peak. Hearts, minds and eyes so set on their goal that it surpasses the concerned warnings of loved ones. The mountain stands and each of the climbers treats the matter of conquering it as one of absolute importance, the film slowly informing us of what each of the climbers expects to learn about themselves and gain in the process.
Their desire to stand victorious over the mountain can be likened to every human’s choice in responding to the God of Psalm 24: ‘Who may ascend the mountain of the LORD? Who may stand in his holy place?’. Humans may distract themselves from the reality of the mountain, or attempt to stand at the peak by themselves. But the Christian knows that the ascension described here is an impossible one for all but God’s own perfect Son, who stands on our behalf.
