Into Thin Air: Death on Everest

After reading the other comment about this movie, I feel I must disagree completely. I found the portraits well-drawn and well-acted given that the production had only two hours to convey the entire story, which of course is much more complex and horrific than could be possibly be presented in a TV movie.

While I could not comprehend the obsession that drove these people to take what seemed an extreme and ultimately deadly risk to climb and "conquer" the mountain, I really wanted them to survive and was saddened when they didn't. Maybe I'm just too sensitive or sentimental, but seeing what the movie did portray, which was distressing enough, and knowing that it isn't anything near what the real tragedy was like, made me cry. It made me think about the real people and what a waste of lives that was.

I thought Jon Krakauer's book on the 1996 Everest climbing disaster, while not great literature and while a rather subjective and partial account, was well-observed and reasonably absorbing. This film, derived from the book, is a very thin account. Shot in Austria, it does not even have the actual Himalayan scenery of the Everest Imax film which was shot in the same calamitous 1996 climbing season. The acting is at least professional; Nat Parker as guide Rob Hall is quite convincing, though his NZ accent switches to London Cockney at times, and Peter Horton does a good impression of the ebullient American guide Scott Fisher.

On the other hand Chris McDonald as Krakauer relies overmuch on his single facial expression of worried concern. The script is pretty awful and the story more a collection of scenes than a coherent narrative. A lot of the time I had to rely on my knowledge of the book to work out what was going on. As for the factual inadequacies (12 people died, not 5, no mention of the South African party, Taiwanese barely mentioned) I forgive the producers for trying to slim things down a bit – it was a messy disaster.

Even so this has all the hallmarks of a `let's cash in' quick and dirty TV movie – it appeared less than 18 months after the incident. It's not likely to change anyone's ideas about mountaineering though I suppose there is some schadenfreude in seeing rich doctors and socialites with no or limited climbing experience attempting to wipe themselves out in various stupid ways at very high altitudes. The Darwin prize of course goes to the client who stepped outside of his tent one morning with only his boot liners on his feet and went for a fatal skid down the mountain.

I felt a little sorry for the guides, generally people who love the mountains, having for economic reasons to take such awful people up them; in my day as an amateur climber I at least got to choose my companions, though some of them were pretty wild. The exploitation of the Sherpas is also hard to take; even though they are willing participants, climbing has become part of their economy, and there are few other options. If I had seen Lopsang Sherpa struggling up the Lhotse face with Sandy Pitman's 30lb satellite phone I would have chucked it down the nearest crevasse. And if Sandy complained, I would have invited her to join it.

Finally caught this on cable last night; it looks as if someone took an original made-for-TV movie, removed all the commercial breaks, and sent it straight over to HBO to serve as filler on their late night schedule.

Since this IS obviously a TV movie (you can tell without trying where the commercials were originally inserted, since a 'dramatic climax and musical stinger' moment occurs every 10-12 minutes), it takes a TV movie approach to telling the story. And this is where the problem lies. Even though the screenplay tries very hard to present an even-handed and fair account of a complex and chaotic series of events in under two hours, the way the story is filmed sinks the movie.

I assumed, going 'blind' into this movie (I know of the book, I've read discussions of the book and the events it portrays, but I haven't actually read the book), that since it involved disaster while climbing at high altitudes, that we would be hearing a lot of strained respiration, a lot of gasping and panting, a lot of throaty vocals. I assumed that we would be seeing a bunch of people staggering painfully up snowy slopes, and lots of closeups of actors taking off their snow goggles and respiration masks (revealing chapped, stubbly faces set in lines of strain), making speeches, and then putting the goggles and masks back on again. And then more staggering, lather, rinse, repeat.

And this is essentially the action for 2/3rds of the movie. People gasp, pant, groan, stagger, stumble around, etc., and then take off their goggles and masks and make speeches (or grimace wordlessly into the camera) for what seems like 90% of the screen time. And then they put the mask and goggles back on and stagger and gasp and groan some more. Once the storm hits, and people start dying, it's really just more of the same, just darker and with more flying snow.

I know it is VERY difficult to 'act' in costumes and props like these, which muffle both facial expressions and body language, two of an actor's most important resources. It must have been a tremendous challenge for the director and cast to try to make a compelling, but entertaining story with this handicap...and while everyone here gives it their best effort, they are essentially defeated by the enormity of the challenge of trying to 'act' under these conditions and with this kind of story and camera treatment. The movie desperately needed more long shots, more establishing shots that let the viewer figure out where all the parties are in relationship to each other, less jump cutting between faces and more character development of each actor's part (other than 'ready to drop from fatigue').

So the results are, well, mixed. I am certain that for the climbers caught in the Everest disaster, that the experience was indeed essentially an endless nightmare of bone-numbing cold and fatigue, gasping for air, and stumbling around with barely a clue. So I think you could say that "Into Thin Air" gives the viewer an accurate subjective view of how it FELT to be in that situation, and on that level, it is a success. But as a story, as an attempt to convey the actual events and decisions, personalities and politics that lead to the actual disaster, it fails both as a documentary and as entertainment.

I also think that the professional and amateur climbing community might have its own reservations about this movie, and its glib summaries of the many complexities and intricacies of the kind of people who climb stuff for fun. But that's for them to bring up, not me.

So, in summary : glad I finally saw it, and I plan to go read the book now. But I don't think it was an especially successful movie.I'm not even sure that a successful dramatic movie (as opposed to a documentary) CAN be made about this story. I give these folks credit for trying hard, but they couldn't get make this story fit into a TV movie format.

I just finished watching "Into Thin Air" after having read Anatoli Boukreev's book "The Climb." I was aware of the book on which this movie was based (I gave it to my mother for Christmas) but not the controversy over what really happened. I have two general comments to make. First, I agree with those who complain that the movie took too many "artistic liberties" with the truth. I have ZERO experience with mountain climbing (I live in Kansas) but I could tell from comparing the book to the movie that the authors/director didn't really care to even try to correctly portray what mountain climbing is all about. And don't give me that line that they did the best they could in two hours. If people care enough, they can tell the story accurately in 2-3 hours.

But my main concern is with the controversy over what really happened. Mr. Boukreev makes a good case in his book that Mr. Krakauer did not accurately portray events on the mountain. I don't know exactly why, but I felt that his argument was persuasive (however, I wasn't there of course...).

What happened on Everest in 1996 is a tragic and compelling story, a true human drama. Unfortunately this made-for-tv movie takes only the most cursory approach to addressing the magnitude of the occurrences, relying on the most loose and superficial portrayal of specific events (events which are the subject of intense controversy still). To claim the character portrayals are shallow is to be generous - there is no character established at all, particularly disappointing given that these were real people, not fictional creations. It's an old line, but highly applicable here: read the book instead.