Everest left me speechless, and I’m still trying to figure whether or not that’s a good thing. Director Baltasar Kormákur’s chronicle of the 1996 Mount Everest Disaster, realized in IMAX 3D, is vast in scope, from characterization to cinematography. It’s a lot to process, even for its two and a half runtime. If you were in for a movie about the perseverance of the human spirit in face of impossible odds, keep looking. Everest is not that movie. It’s hectic, blunt, and fatalistic.

The movie follows two teams seeking to ascend the slope of Mount Everest in May of 1996. The first half of the movie follows their preparation for the trip, and their moves from Camp to Camp on the way up. One team is led by Rob Hall (Jason Clarke), and the other by Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal). In spite of an approaching storm from the south, and over twenty teams wanting to climb the peak at the same time as them, the two teams make the ascent of Everest, reaching its peak on May 11th. From there, things go south due to a combination of human error and the encroaching blizzard.

Cinematically, it’s a beautiful movie to watch. In IMAX 3D, the images were incredibly crisp, and the depth of field captured the vastness of the mountain. Even the few scenes that were in tents and the like had a great sense of space to them – whether they were in  the larger tents at Base Camp or the smaller, cramped ones used during the expedition, these scenes felt exceptionally realistic in size. The movie is pure eye-candy from start to finish.

Script-wise, Everest leaves a little to be desired. The movie builds exceptionally slowly in the first act, and the amount of characters stretches the amount of attention each one is given a little thin. That being said, the two characters that have families – Rob Hall and Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin) are very well developed. I felt for these characters on a level that I didn’t with many of the others, and this is also due to the presence of their wives; Jan Hall (Kiera Knightley) and Peach Weathers (Robin Wright). Some of the most evocative scenes in the movie are conversations between Jan and Rob. Pacing problems continue throughout the movie, making it exceptionally difficult to follow the trail of events at certain points in the movie.  The week-long trip is condensed into the first hour of the movie, and the last day expanded into an hour. This, combined with a hammering, fatalistic ending, left me jarred and with a bit of a headache by the end of the movie.

The actors in this movie performed well even with the mediocre script. Perhaps my favorite performance was Gyllenhaal’s, as Fischer – he captures the essence of a relentless, ever-positive soul with style and poise. On the other side of the spectrum is Brolin. While certain scenes did elicit sympathy from me, Brolin plays far too much into the role of a stereotypical red-blooded American with an arrogant streak, and thus fell a bit on the flat side.. Everyone else did well enough, but didn’t leave much of an impact on me.

Everest is grim and scary, and doesn’t have many high notes to it. If you go into it expecting a happy-go-lucky tale, you will be sorely disappointed.  It is the story of one of the largest instances of human loss on the mountain, and stays true to that story. It doesn’t sugar-coat anything. It portrays nature as a cruel, and uncaring force, but does so with a subtlety rarely seen in these sorts of movies. Usually, there is always one character whose main goal is to yammer on about “Mother Nature’s Wrath”, but here, nature just leaves its mark.  However, the thrills are well-worth the story’s grim perspective. Quite a few scenes had me on the edge of my seat, eyes glued to the scene. When things go wrong in Everest, they often happen quickly, and completely change the course of the story.

Overall, it holds up well as a film, if confusing and overly grim at points. My opinion on it is somewhere in-between the good and the average, and it’ll largely be up to a viewer to pass judgement on its scripting to decide whether they like it. It’s discomfiting, and if you can sit through that, then I recommend it. 

★★★☆☆