A feeling of tragic inevitability hangs over the peak of Everest, accentuated by our knowledge that this won't end well. You don't need to have read Jon Krakauer's nonfiction classic Into Thin Air to know this 1996 Everest expedition was ill-fated.
As audience members, we're left to mentally check off the moments that sealed the climbers' doom as they unfold onscreen: No, don't go up there! Turn around! You don't have to make it to the top!
In this sense, the handsomely mounted Everest plays like a horror movie, with the part of the monster played by human hubris and nature, red in tooth and claw. It's also a descendent of the big-budget disaster movies of the 1970s, the ones with star-studded casts and sequence after sequence of tested mettle.
Along for the journey are Josh Brolin (playing Dallas' Beck Weathers), Jake Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke, Keira Knightley, John Hawkes, Robin Wright, Sam Worthington and Emily Watson.
The climbing sequences, which take up the bulk of the movie, pack a visceral punch. Even before things go bad, you feel every blast of wind and gasp for breath. Director Baltasar Kormákur conjures an urgency that makes you realize how much you take for granted necessities like oxygen and rest. Everest reminds us how small we really are, especially when you see it in Imax 3-D (the format in which Everest will be released on Sept.18; the standard version arrives next week).
The actors manage to etch their personalities into the mountain, no mean feat when you're covered in climbing gear and icicles. Clarke brings a fatherly pragmatism to expedition leader Rob Hall; he knows Everest is no place for sentimental gestures, and you wince when he makes one that will clearly prove costly. Brolin's Weathers is a cocky rogue with a personable side. Michael Kelly, who plays political henchman Doug Stamper on House of Cards, brings to Krakauer a wry, writerly distance that can't withstand the panic and anguish that overtakes the entire enterprise.
It's Krakauer who asks the question that must be asked, the question that provoked the famous retort "Because it's there" from Everest climber George Mallory. Why would you possibly want to do this? Different characters have different answers; Weathers hints at the black dog of depression that disappears when he climbs.
Aside from this moment, Everest is less concerned with the why than the what: the hour-by-hour race against a nasty storm, the desperate need for oxygen, the brutal sting of frostbite. At its purest, Everest delivers the lean naturalism of Jack London's short story "To Build a Fire." Before long, survival is all that matters.
Away from the mountain, tucked away comfortably at home but twisting with anxiety, we find the loved ones. Wright and Knightley are the surrogates for those of us who feel right at home on the ground. They feel no compulsion to cheat death, and they fret over what drives their husbands to do so. (The expedition includes one woman, Yasuko Namba, played by Naoko Mori.)
Everest, like nature, passes no judgment. It shows us what these people did, the price they paid, and leaves us to wonder if those who didn't make it back might have had any regrets.
EVEREST (B+)
Directed by Baltasar Kormákur. PG-13 (intense peril and disturbing images). 121 mins. In Imax 3-D at select locations; in wide release Sept. 25.
