Everest: The Other Side

Judged on its cinematic merits, Everest: The Other Side is easily a 10/10. It is incredible. It should not exist, but it does. It is something to see — something wondrous and unsettling. So see it in IMAX, and be prepared. Just know it will leave you shaken. There’s nothing like it.

This is not soothing nature-doc viewing, but instead, a clear-eyed stare into the face of death — with a dash of marital angst, too. Chin and Vasarhelyi’s greatest achievement is managing to mine and mount suspense even when the climax is already foretold — and in the bluntly personal, home-hitting terms through which they tell another man’s story.

Beyond all the extraordinary photography of Himalayan mountain ranges, icy crevasses and plunging couloirs, Everest: The Other Side is a film about how we choose to live our lives and what it means for those we love.

It pulls you into the whirlpool of Morrison’s mournful odyssey and nearly drowns you in his single-minded refusal to admit defeat.

Despite itself, the film is still a moving exercise.

The Other Side works hard to combat or paste over the heavy moral questions it provokes, uplifting ending and all. But I left the theater feeling angry and bitter, suddenly put off by the whole project of mountaineering.

While the great, victorious climax of Vasarhelyi and Chin’s shot-for-IMAX epic is drenched in weep-inducing emotion, the film sits in an uncomfortable, verging-on-hypocritical middle ground, oddly lacking self-awareness even as it believes it is built on it.