Everest, the film.

[Exit Stage Left]

Just back from the I-Max in Manchester, having seen 'Everest'. Heather and I have read two books about the 1996 Rob Hall disaster. This one was based on a couple of others we haven't read, which saved us a lot of pedantry.

First film we've seen in 3D or I-Max, excellent technically, and as a story. Thoroughly recommended for anyone interested in Everest, climbing or adventure.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZQVpPiOji0

[Zipperhead]

I watched the trailer for it last week and was confused at first because I was sure that I'd already seen an Imax film about the disaster - and I have. There was one made a few years back.

But I've already got this one on my short list of films that I want to go and see, and I'll make the trek to a big imax for it.

[Exit Stage Left]

There was an I-Max crew making a documentary at the time of the disaster. I've not seen that, I perhaps should.

[mattc]

This one was based on a couple of others we haven't read, which saved us a lot of pedantry.

 

Based on the trailers I had exactly zero interest in paying money to see this, so your review is a pleasant surprise.

Here in the south-east its a long way to our nearest I-Max, but we might walk down to our local old-fashioned picture house for this.

[hatler]

Wasn't the iMax film part of the expedition which included John Krakauer, and he penned Into Thin Air which was a commercial success.

However, lead guide on the other principal group involved was a Russian climber called Anatoly Boukreev. He was severely criticised in Krakauer's book and he responded with (I think) The Climb, which presented a completely different perspective.

Both books are a gripping read. Highly recommended. I dread to think what liberties the recent film has taken.

[Exit Stage Left]

Those are the two books that we've read, and we wondered how the issues raised would be tackled. Krakauer and Boukreev are key to the action, but they are handled well. We didn't feel that any liberties had been taken. David Breashers, who filmed the original IMAX film, was involved throughout, and the climbing sequences ring true.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/everest/true-story-1996-disaster/

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

It's good to hear this as Mrs A wants to see this at our nearest I-max cinema. It's a long way and getting there's gonna be tough..

As far as mountaineering is concerned I have zero ambitions in that direction beyond wanting to cycle up the Alpe d'Huez next year.

[Wascally Weasel]

I watched it, it was rubbish.

They made absolutely no reference to Ted Moult or double glazing and the iconic Tan Hill pub scene had clearly been edited out of the script.

[Riggers]

Ha ha! Excellent. 

[Mr Larrington]

Wasn't the iMax film part of the expedition which included John Krakauer, and he penned Into Thin Air which was a commercial success.

Jon Krakauer was on a commercial expedition led by Rob Hall, which just happened to be climbing at the same time as David Breashears' Imax one.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

You've gotta hand it to the film crew - climbing Everest and doing the filming at the same time..

[Andrij]

You've gotta hand it to the film crew - climbing Everest and doing the filming at the same time..

Back before their dads were lads... Battle for the Himalayas: The Fight to Film Everst

[Exit Stage Left]

You've gotta hand it to the film crew - climbing Everest and doing the filming at the same time..

They did get a camera to the summit, but the film also uses all the technology usually devoted to fantasy epics, and a lot of the same actors.

[ian]

Never been a big fan of mountain climbing, always seems to be one of self-indulgent things done by affluent men to prove they're affluent men while really just being a channel for their underlying insecurities. Plus it's cold, the sherpas hate you and probably wee in your tea, and there's yeti.

Any, I did just see it at the Imax in 3D and it was very good even though it had no yeti. Plenty of vertiginous effects. The only downside was with everyone bundled up in cold weather gear I spent half the movie trying to figure out who's who.

Oh and there was an Audi advert during the trailers that made me want to punch the screen with a tractor.

[Exit Stage Left]

I preferred the days when cinemas advertised booze and fags. One of our ads was for printer ink, with a delighted child in it.

Mountain climbing is a bit more democratic round our way, we belong to the successor of the Leyland Motors fell walking group, and it costs £10 for a day trip to the Lakes, Dales or Snowdonia on a coach, once a fortnight, £5 annual membership. Climbing is especially popular among skilled tradesmen and women, as they often get taken to the hills as apprentices.

[red marley]

After the appalling trailer, I didn't have very high hopes for this film, but thanks to ESL's brief summary, I thought it worth a go. And it was well worth it. Perhaps a few too many characters with too sketchy a background, but the experience was stunning. The 3D IMax certainly helps. It could have slipped heavily into cliche (the risk-averse sensible leader, the over-confident maverick, the hard as nails strong silent one, the "I've bagged 6 of the 7 peaks, just this last one left" one etc.) But it somehow gracefully avoids following predictable convention despite us knowing the fate of the expeditions.

The level of sound and visual design presumably with the help CGI is quite remarkable. With the exception of one scene of a thunderstorm rising up the peak, it felt utterly convincing. The hyperrealism of the iMax 3D was used to good effect without too many gratuitous boulders 'n' stuff being thrown out of the screen at us.

Oh and there was an Audi advert during the trailers that made me want to punch the screen with a tractor.

Would that be the one of a lady car giving birth to monstrosity of a red baby-car-thing? The one in which we get to see the tethered mumcar in labour complete with crowning cargina (thankfully not in full 3D)? I think the 100 year project whereby The Car is forcibly inserted into every aspect of our physical, emotional, cultural and spiritual lives is now complete.

[ian]

Would that be the one of a lady car giving birth to monstrosity of a red baby-car-thing? The one in which we get to see the tethered mumcar in labour complete with crowning cargina (thankfully not in full 3D)? I think the 100 year project whereby The Car is forcibly inserted into every aspect of our physical, emotional, cultural and spiritual lives is now complete.

Oh, that one. That was pretty bad, I was too squicked to be angry. No, the Audi Q7 advert with a group of – I presume – Inuit-a-likes talking about 'the beast', some kind of legend that terrorised their tribe, and how nice that a big Q7 came along and scared it away. Now, notwithstanding the irony that tar sands under their feet are about to ripped up to fuel the damn things, it's advert about how big and scary a car is. That's it's selling point. Except, in real life they're not scaring off mythological beasts, it's other people. It's a car made big purely for the sake of being bigger.

I don't get much exposure to adverts, but if it's like that all the time, it explains Audi drivers.

Anyway, the other thing I liked about the movie was the lack of heroism, and they few times someone did something heroic they died in short order. Oh, and if you're a mouthy American you get an helicopter and other people to risk their lives. Both are probably real life.

ETA: Stars Wars trailers, why are they so bad, just seem to be random scenes from the movie stitched together with no trailer narrative?

[Legs]

ETA: Stars Wars films, why are they so bad?

FTFY

(sorry for OT-ness)

[Exit Stage Left]

Anyway, the other thing I liked about the movie was the lack of heroism, and they few times someone did something heroic they died in short order. Oh, and if you're a mouthy American you get an helicopter and other people to risk their lives. Both are probably real life.

Centring the story around Beck Weathers was the easiest way into the larger narrative. The controversy about the disaster centres around Anatoli Boukreev, who has been cast as both a hero and a villain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Boukreev

[Jes]

I have been thinking a lot about whether I want to see this film.
In May 1996 I was at Everest base camp with the South African expedition.
I wasn't there because I had plenty of money. Far from it. I was short listed for the climbing expedition, failed to get a place but got on the support team.
It had been a dream from the age of 9 and it took 20 more years to get there.

It was an experience that, nearly 20 years later is still not one I tend to share so deep are many of the memories. My photographs have been out only once since I came to the UK 16 years ago and I shared them with a man from this parish only when I knew mountains had been a part of his life. And he understood things most people don't about the different rules of that world.

 I have  read just about every account of that day I could and I own most but not one has given me anymore of a
 sense of understanding or made some of the memories any easier.We heard conversations no one wants to hear knowing the outcome.

11 people died that day and no matter how many people try to tell the story, to me it'll never be right because many of the main characters were already dead.

It didn't end there either. We lost Bruce Herrod on or around May 23.
Walking back to Lukla there was plenty of time to think but I remember only one thing that was said to me by an older climber- sometimes girl, dreams have sharp edges.
That hit home sitting in the old Russian Mil helicopter knowing some people would never make that journey home.

At the moment I don't think I do want to see the film. Nearly two decades on, it is still too raw and some things should be left to the memories of those who were there.

[Exit Stage Left]

Those are excellent reasons not to want to see the film. One of the crew was David Breashers, who was the director of the IMAX crew in 1996.

David Breashears was there to witness it firsthand. The documentarian and lifelong mountaineer, then 38 years old, was on Everest shooting an Imax documentary. He and his team had captured footage of the mountaintop that morning against blue and empty skies, but after descending to Camp II, at 21,300ft, the storm struck. Normally, bad weather on Everest whips in from the west on the jet stream. But this one surged up the valley to the south from the Bay of Bengal; the wet, black remnants of a tropical cyclone.

“I’d never heard thunder on Everest,” he says. “I’d never seen such dark clouds. It was the most violent storm I’d ever seen in the mountains. I was truly terrified – not for my safety, but for the people I knew where still up there, in the cloud and wind.”

On their way back to camp, Breashears and his crew had hiked past all of the climbers who were making an attempt on the summit that day, including the blizzard’s eight eventual victims. Within 12 hours, they were part of the rescue effort.

As he and his crew helped the survivors to get medical help, their cameras remained in their cases. “None of us had the heart to film it,” he says. “It wasn’t in our instincts. Everyone on that team was a climber before they were a filmmaker.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/everest/true-story-1996-disaster/