There are many reasons as
to why I watch a film these days and this was no exception. Naoko Mori was
playing a main character, so it was well worth settling down for some quiet
procrastination, and given that it was Winter, and although at this point, we didn’t
have snow, it was a touch cold outside.
I’m actually glad it
wasn’t snowing otherwise I may have been tempted to up the heating a touch.
Everest tells the story of
the tragic events surrounding May 1996, when Rob Hall and Scott Fischer of
rival commercial expeditions set off with their groups to climb Mount Everest.
The going as you would expect was not without challenges and some pretty rough
climbs, which saw many of the climbers suffering under extreme circumstances.
Even the most experienced of climbers was pushed to the point of exhaustion and
when climbing to a certain point were horrified to learn that oxygen canisters
hadn’t been left with enough oxygen to survive the harsh weather system coming
in.
All experienced climbers
know the mountain well – you’d be a fool not to know that you have a small
window available to you. If you can’t make it up in that time limit, then you
have to concede that it isn’t going to happen. But there’s always one climber
who has to reach the top, no matter what, sacrificing the lives of others for
his own ends and it’s this moment that marks the start of the tragic events
that unfold.
Naoko Mori plays veteran
amateur climber Yasuko Namba who hopes to complete her final Seven Summits
ascent. Tom Goodman-Hill plays Neal Beidleman, who reaches the summit and was
one of the survivors on Fischer’s team, Mountain Madness.
Many climbers on their
descent lost their lives to the mountain, and many of them are still on the
mountain to this day.
If you are going to watch
this film, make sure it’s a warm day outside, because the snowy scenery is even
colder when there’s snow just outside your window.
It’s a stunning film, and
if I hadn’t seen the green screen behind Jake Gyllenhaal in some images on my
cover search, I’d have been convinced the actors were up a mountain freezing
their bits off – obviously not on Everest but there’s plenty of smaller
mountains to practice climbing up.
Excellent film, sad
ending, but then, a lot of true films tend to be that way, don’t they?
Well worth watching.
Available on Netflix.
