Because it's a snow day, mo'fuckas! I'm kind of torn on this one. On one hand it's a competently made dramatization of a famous climbing tragedy, and at least respecting it feels like the right thing to do. On the other hand, it's got so many characters to serve (kill) that it doesn't really feel like any one climber's story, at least until the end when one of them survives with an assload of frostbite and makes it home to his wife.
Don't get me wrong - making real life tragedies into big-budget movies is as American as apple pie, and it's not surprising that the 1996 Everest disaster became a movie, just that it took so long to become one. But I still find myself asking what the point is if you aren't going to take any artistic liberties. Respect for the victims, sure, I get it - let's show them dying exactly how they did, no embellishing - but there's very little drama in this disaster movie. I can't help but think of the last movie I saw with Jake Gyllenhaal freezing half to death after a natural disaster - The Day After Tomorrow. That shit's ridiculous as hell, but at least it was entertaining. At least I was legitimately rooting for Jake and his friends to survive. That sounds horrible, and I probably didn't word it right - this is, again, a movie about real people who died real, tragic deaths - but my point is that the movie does nothing to make you feel the disaster as it closes in. It's played as straight as a documentary, for the most part. And I get it, I do - too much schmaltz or heartstring tugging and they'd get accused of milking a real tragedy. But isn't that already what they're doing? Showing, and profiting from, dramatic reconstructions of real people's real deaths? I dunno - I'm still struggling to understand why this got made. What is the story here? What is the narrative? It doesn't feel like it should be enough to just say, "these were some ambitious people, and then they all died." I mean, that's a movie to make, sure, but it's nihilistic in tone, which this one wasn't. Gah! The more I write the more lost I am. Where's the thread? Who's the hero? What's the moral?
Oh, forgot to mention this in my review while rambling, but:
ReplyDeleteThe expedition depicted in the movie killed 8 people in 1996. Then, while filming on Everest in 2014, the crew were fortunate NOT to be hit by an avalanche that ended up killing 14 people. That's sort of fucked up, right? "We're out here making a movie about the time 8 people died, and HOLY SHIT, 14 people just died." I mean, all of a sudden you're no longer making a movie about the deadliest day in the history of Everest, because you yourself have just experienced the deadliest day in the history of Everest.
PSA: Don't try to climb Mount Everest.