Five Reasons To Watch ‘Everest’

Based on the infamous 1996 Mount Everest disaster which saw the deaths of famed climbers Rob Hall (Jason Clarke) and Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllennhal), Baltasar Kormákur’s Everest is a compelling, heart-wrenching tale of those who seek to conquer the towering heights of the impossible. Here’s five reasons to watch this epic story on the big screen:

5. Baltasar Kormákur: An adventurous filmmaker

It takes guts to explore the world’s highest peak on film, and director Baltasar Kormákur certainly has plenty of it as he seeks to understand and honour the men and women who perished in their pursuits. Kormákur handles all aspects of this incredible cinematic feat with a great deal of sensitivity and accuracy to true historical events, as well as the detail that surrounds the mountain.

4. Raw emotion

Everest is a film powered by emotion in its rawest form. From the exhilaration that the climbers first feel when they embark on their quest, to the fatigue and wear that begins to surround them as they make their ascent, Everest pulls at its audience’s heart strings and won’t let go for a second.

3. Breathtaking scope

Everest is powered by feats of extraordinary photography, and director Kormákur certainly has an extraordinary collaborator in cinematographer Salvatore Totino, who captures the forces of nature in both their calm and terrifying states. Totino’s skills as a photographer amplify the film’s emotional hold on the audience, drawing them further into its epic story, and making it that much harder to let it go afterwards.

2. The heroism of Rob Hall

While Kormákur gives all of Everest‘s cast room to breathe and to express the characterisation of their true life counterparts, it’s Jason Clarke who steals the movie as New Zealand climbing expert Rob Hall. Clarke as Hall places the lives of his team ahead of his own, and channels both his incredible mountaineering skill and heroic stance as a leader.

1. The highest peak on earth

But at the centre of the story is Everest itself — an all-powerful bastion of the impossible. At all times you feel the mountain’s colossal presence, and the danger that it casts down on those who attempt to scale it. Kormákur and his cast pay extraordinary respect to this phenomenal natural presence, and audiences will come to understand just how powerful a force of nature this great peak is.

Image source: Paramount Pictures.