For Reel

Director: Baltasar Kormákur

At about the halfway point of Everest, author Jon Krakauer (Michael Kelly) asks his fellow climbers why they would want to do something as dangerous as climbing Mount Everest. The responses he gets are various non-answers, vaguely hinting at the theme of achieving impossible dreams or seeing an incredible beauty. Still the question remains: why Everest? What Everest does right is straddling the line between having a fascination with people willing to sacrifice themselves for their dream while also suggesting the pitfalls of that very human spirit. A series of miscalculations and macho stubbornness is what ultimately causes the downfall of many of the climbers on that fateful day in 1996, a manifestation of fellow climbing company leader Scott Fischer’s (Jake Gyllenhaal) argument that if people need their hands held going up the peak, they probably have no place climbing the mountain. Despite director Baltasar Kormákur’s valiant effort in keeping the action legible (characters will often take off their climbing goggles and hoods just so the audience can see who is who), the prolonged climax is suitably chaotic but washes over audiences in white noise and blurry, confusing images. That being said, maybe evoking dizziness and exhaustion isn’t necessarily an ill-considered goal for a film like this to have.