This is an engaging documentary about the failed 1924
British expedition to climb Mt. Everest. The leaders of the expedition, George Mallory
and Andrew Irvine among them, apparently weren’t thrilled with Cpt. Noel’s tagging
along to film, but that left Noel to bring his own subjectivity to bear on this
movie. And his is a refreshing take that
is neither a hagiography of valiant leaders nor a hyped thrill like we see on
cable TV. Noel’s interest here is the
beauty that surrounds the climbers and the almost mystic doom that follows the
expedition.
Long before David Lean filled his camera frame with a desert
and let a distant line of camels cross it, Noel’s steady lens gazed at tiny lines
of men and yaks as they trudged across the Tibetan plateau or struggled up an
ice-caked cliff. And these are only a
few images of the beauty Noel finds on the expedition. We also see landscapes with square Tibetan village structures that cling to topography and close-ups of the rugged
inhabitants dressed traditionally.
Glacial columns create fantasy landscapes, too, and all the while,
Everest looms in the background with a plume of snow blowing off its peak. And we watch darkness creep over this
extraordinary landscape several times.
Epic of Everest tells us that the expedition is cold, hard, and menacing,
but what resonates is the beauty of the endeavor that it shows us.
Noel also imparts a mystical doom to his telling, just as an
Anglo-Saxon chronicler might in one of his epics. Everest is a mighty, unconquered force of
nature, and we see a Tibetan priest foretell the expedition’s failure. We also learn that as Chomolungma, the Mother
Goddess of the Earth, Everest is protected by mythic, howling dogs, and that one
of its glaciers, for all its beauty, is the place that fairies and giants
dance. All these would threaten those
who seek to conquer the mountain. At one
point, an intertitle makes doom even more explicit when it tells us that the
next image of the 22-year-old Irving is that of a man who would soon be
dead. Hence the dread as we see Mallory
and Irving set out on their last attempt at summiting and later watch Noel Odell
he lays out blankets on a high ridge as a signal that the two have
vanished. The fatalism that Noel evokes here hearkens back to that of early storytellers like the Beowulf poet.
Even with this originality, Noel’s portrayal doesn’t manage to transcend the worldview of his
time. We learn the name of only one of
the 500 porters, but the film mentions the names of every one the Europeans; we
linger on the deaths of Mallory and Irving, but we never learn anything of the
two porters who freeze to death in a base camp.
There is also a smugness in the film’s attitude towards the Tibetans and
an attitude of conquest towards nature.
But the beauty and spirit that inform this film lift it past the limits
of its worldview and make it a movie that we can readily respond to today.
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