In films like Meru and Free Solo, Jimmy Chin set a high bar for mountaineering documentaries. His latest, co-directed with Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, is an extremely challenging work that questions the very idea of climbing.
Everest: The Other Side is pitched as a story about Jim Morrison's attempt to be the first person to ski down from the summit of Everest. Morrison wants to ski the North Side, a steep rock face that narrows through two couloirs. He will be joined by his wife Hilaree Nelson, an elite climber.
Since the North Face is in the Republic of China, the skiers have to run a gauntlet of political obstacles. Furthermore, they need a support team of Sherpas, cinematographers, doctors, logistics experts, and patrons. That's on top of an insane training regimen.
Vasarhelyi and Chin shoot their material in a straightforward manner, using archival footage and photographs as well as talking head interviews with assorted colleagues and Nelson's two young boys—both of whom express misgivings about their mother's climbing.
The heart of the doc is the mountain footage, shot by Chin and associates who employ state-of-the-art technology to show landscapes that have never been seen on screen before. Breathtaking doesn't begin to describe the cinematography, made all the more spectacular when screened in a modified IMAX format. Miraculous vistas are shown in crystal-clear detail, as well as remarkably intimate closeups.
Morrison has skied unforgiving terrain all over the world. To prepare for Everest, he and Nelson climb Manaslu, the eighth-highest mountain in the world. A fatal accident calls into question whether Morrison can or should continue with his Everest quest.
Chin and his subjects have flirted with danger before. A climber in Meru fractured his skull. Free Solo has a chilling montage of free climbers who died. But the death in Everest feels even more shocking because it occurs almost randomly. We see a slash of snow moving and nothing more. Blink, and the moment is gone.
Are the filmmakers exploiting a death, or honoring it? Morrison is wracked by guilt while deciding whether or not to continue. He asks Chin's advice, and the filmmaker isn't sure himself. Over a dining room table, he argues with Vasarhelyi about the stakes in climbing, what exactly he is willing to risk. She reminds him that he promised to pull back. He feels a need to aid a friend.
When Morrison continues, Chin is by his side, climbing Everest as part of the team. They start after the end of the monsoon season, when there is enough snow to ski, but conditions are also more dangerous. Avalanches are a constant threat. At one point the camera points to Chin roped up on a cliff, a cascade of snow dropping onto him.
The film details several more setbacks to Morrison's quest before dropping another narrative bomb concerning his past. What he experienced may help explain his drive to complete the plan, although many viewers will might view him as irrational.
At one point, in a tent thousands of meters high, Chin turns to Morrison and questions whether he actually enjoys climbing. A closeup of a shaken Chin towards the end of the film shows just how much the climb affected him.
Did North Face sponsorship and National Geographic production funds persuade the filmmakers to continue the Everest expedition despite the accidents that plagued the team? It's one of the many troubling questions surrounding Everest: The Other Side.
The film opens today, only in movie theaters, via National Geographic Films.