Best mountaineering documentary ever? Tom Smith

I just finished watching Storm Over Everest on KPBS (thanks to Matt for alerting me to it).  It's probably the best climbing documentary I have ever seen.  It was filmed by David Breashears in HD, and the footage of the Himalaya and Everest are something to behold.  For my own part I will say, I get it now.  I have trekked in the Alaska Range and the Alps and climbed in the Andes and the Rockies, but I guess I always thought a bit, what's the big deal about the Himalayas?  I don't think that anymore.  Somehow Breashears managed to (partially?) capture something I have not seen captured before.  It left me feeling a little sick with longing to go there, not a welcome feeling maybe, but proof of his success. 

Not only did he capture some of the thrill of being on the mountain, he very effectively portrayed, as well as any film could, I imagine, the terror of being caught in a storm at 27,000 feet.  The darkness, the noise of the wind, the bottomless cold, the realization that you are probably going to die there -- he made it all quite easy to imagine.  For the first 40 minutes, I was thinking, God, I want to be there.  For the last hour and 20 minutes I was thinking, God, I would not want to be there.  You see a flimsy tent getting blasted by 100 mph winds, just barely clinging to the mountain, and marvel that any of them made it out alive.

There were some insights in the film. Beck Weathers I think was eloquent in describing the desolation of the high mountains, the sense they have of people truly not belonging there.  You don't hear that mentioned a lot, but it is very true, I think, a kind of deep, lunar hostility you see above maybe 18,000 feet that is both thrilling but also kind of evil seeming.  Anyway, I thought Weathers said it well.

Some commentators have criticized this Frontline episode for punting on the controversies of the 1996 Everest season, and they have a point.  I was left a little baffled as to who were the good guys and bad guys Weathers was referring to at the end.  I read Into Thin Air and thought Krakauer did not come off very well even in his own estimation, but Storm Over Everest certainly didn't clear anything up on that score.  Pretty obviously guides Rob Hall and Scott Fischer made some grave misjudgments.  If you and some of your clients die, some bad decisions have been made, especially if some clients survived by turning back more or less against their guide's leadership.  But none of that was explored in the documentary.  Of course, that would have made for a duller show.

I also don't buy the romantic line that mountains reveal your true character, and that if you are able to drag yourself or someone else to safety, then you are truly of the right stuff.  It is a nice thought, but it probably has more to do with how well your red blood cells freight oxygen than the strength of your spirit. There were people who displayed enormous courage on Everest and others, not so much, but it is very difficult to judge the behavior of people who are profoundly hypoxic and hypothermic, who think they see their families in front of them or that they are home in bed, as they are slowly dying on a mountainside.

Comments

[Adam Kolber]

You may also enjoy this documentary about blind teenagers climbing "in the shadow of Everest"(though it's quite a different sort of film than the one you describe):
http://www.blindsightthemovie.com/