W ith some of its showings in the huge Imax format, this National Geographic-backed documentary feels like a callback to the early, glory days of large-format cinema when it was all about spectacle and scale, turning footage of natural-world wonders into an immersive experience. Those with a fear of heights or prone to vertigo may find this all a bit too immersive, in fact. That’s even more the case considering the point of the movie appears to be to provoke anxiety in the viewer for nearly the entire running time as we watch the subjects scale the steeper, far less travelled north face Mount Everest and then, for reasons never quite adequately explained, ski back down it again.
Such was the mission of experienced mountaineer Jim Morrison , an amiable-seeming fellow who, like all of those who pursue extreme sports, seems to feel a compulsion to put himself in the kind of grave danger that, should things go wrong, would put other people in danger rescuing him. His partner Hilaree Nelson shares his passion, and the two of them set off to be the first people to ski down Everest’s north face, and the first third of the film tracks them as they plan and eventually do practice runs to achieve this goal. Neither seems able to adequately explain why they’ve chosen to take such a risk, although Nelson tries a bit to articulate her mountaineering life almost as if it’s a career choice that her two teenage sons should simply accept as her choice to make, and maybe even thank her for – even if that means that should she be injured or lost they and Morrison (who is not the boys’ biological father) would also have to deal with the aftermath.
We don’t want to give away what happens, but these moral questions hang over this film in a much more obvious way than they do in most other mountain-climbing films. (Interestingly, this is also a work co-directed by another couple, Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, who appear on screen to thrash out their own feelings on risk and reward.) Meanwhile, there’s some thoughtful footage of the various Nepalese guides who assist in Jim and Hilaree’s adventures, local men who have been climbing these mountains all their lives because they have far fewer career choices than the western tourists who come through town with camera crews, swathed in brightly coloured, prominently logo-bearing sports equipment.
The lurid palette of this kit does in fact become a bit distracting when we get back to the mountain climbing stuff, and if you want to just relax and look at the stunning landscape you need to train your eyes to ignore the fluorescent jackets obstructing the view. That’s not criticising the cinematography itself; it is pin-sharp thanks to the most advanced kinds of lenses and drone technology. But it’s safe to say the ethics aired here are a far murkier affair.
