The Mountain Wins Again

In a little over 8 months, it will be the 20^th anniversary of one of the great disasters in the annals of mountain climbing. On May 10^th, 1996, several climbing parties attempting to summit Mt. Everest got caught on the mountain when a storm raced in. It dropped visibility to almost nothing while hurricane-force freezing winds ripped at the climbers’ bodies. Eight people lost their lives, their bodies lost or unrecoverable from the 29,000 foot peak. (There are now over 150 permanent residents on the mountain.) The story was told in the bestseller by Jon Krakauer, “Into Thin Air.” Now it’s been made into the movie Everest.

As the movie opens, text tells how after Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first summited Everest in 1953, 40 more climbers attempted it in the next few decades, with one in four losing their lives in the attempt. But then two companies turned climbing the mountain into a commercial venture, charging a hefty price to take climbers to the top of the world. While there’s a certain amount of hubris in thinking an inherently deadly activity can be commercialized, the companies were able to operate without any fatalities for the first few years. That changed on May 10^th.

Everest focuses on the leader of one of the commercial climbs, Rob Hall (Jason Clarke), whose company Adventure Consultants had 8 clients for the climb, including Krakauer who had contracted to write about the experience for Outside magazine. Others in the group included Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin), whose climbing put a strain on his marriage to his wife Peach (Robin Wright); Doug Hansen (John Hawkes), a postman who’d tried to summit before but had to turn back; and Yasuko Namba (Naoko Mori), who’d climbed 6 of the 7 highest mountains in the world and was trying to complete the septet.

Hall’s wife Jan Arnold (Kiera Knightley), a climber herself, was back at home in New Zealand expecting their first child in July. Hall’s base camp team included camp manager Helen Winton (Emily Watson) and Dr. Caroline Mackenzie (Elizabeth Debicki). The leader of Mountain Madness, the other commercial company, was Scott Fisher (Jake Gyllenhaal), with a more laid back attitude towards the climb. Two other teams, one from South Africa and the other making an IMAX movie about the mountain, were planning like Hall and Fisher to summit on May 10^th, which created a traffic jam on the narrow points on the route to the summit. There’s only a small window in May when the summit has the best weather conditions and it’s only -4 F at the summit, rather than the average -31F. The winds are also less severe at that time. Everest is so high it protrudes into the jet stream; winds have been clocked at 175 mph, faster than a Cat 5 hurricane.

Icelandic director/writer/producer Baltasar Kormakur is mostly known to US audiences for directing 2013’s 2 Guns starring Denzel Washington and Mark Walburg, but he’d also made other films in his native country, including The Deep, a based-on-a-true-story tale of a fisherman trying to survive after his boat capsizes in the freezing ocean. Along with screenwriters William Nicholson (Shadowlands, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom) and Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours), Kormakur has created a remarkably faithful account of the disaster as well as a story of survival against huge odds for some of the mountaineers.

It helps that the movie was partially filmed in Nepal as even with the special effects available today it’s hard to recreate the spectacle of the Himalayas and the Nepalese landscape. Before the showing at the Flix Brewhouse where I saw Everest, they screened clips of movies starring actors from the feature or films that have similar themes. One clip was from 2000’s Vertical Limit that supposedly takes place on K2, the second highest mountain and the neighbor of Everest. Comparing it to the visuals of Everest is like comparing a gangster movie from the 1930s filmed on the studio backlot with Goodfellas – the point being, there is no comparison. Visual effects were used to recreate Everest’s summit, but director and crew did an incredible job matching it to pictures that have been taken of the actual route.

The film doesn’t delve deeply into the characters, particularly in the case of Scott Fisher, but it does draw you in and has a definite emotional power. If you’ve read “Into Thin Air” or some of the other accounts of the events, Everest is visually illuminating and clarifying. It’s hard to turn real life into reel life, but the makers of Everest have done a commendable job.

Touching

Mark O’Brien contracted polio when he was six, in the 1950s before the Salk vaccine tamed the disease.  It left his muscles below his neck useless, and he had to spend most of each day from then on in an iron lung simply to breathe.  About four hours was as long as he could live outside the lung.  Yet he did not let his condition define or confine him.  O’Brien graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in English Literature and then attended their graduate school for journalism.  Besides writing articles, he was also a poet.  At first he dictated his work, but then he switched to typing the articles using a stick in his mouth to strike the keys.  In the 1980s he was asked to do a piece on the sex lives of the disabled.  The article became a personal journey for O’Brien, and it’s the basis for the excellent film, The Sessions.

The movie opens with a news report on the real Mark O’Brien, using a motorized gurney to travel to and from his classes at Berkeley.  A few years later, Mark (John Hawkes) is living independently with the assistance of two caregivers.  One is a rough and uncaring woman.  Mark is a devote Catholic who must work through his feelings with his priest, Father Brendan (William H. Macy), before he can fire her.  Instead he hires Amanda (Annika Marks), whose lack of experience is made up for by her gentle, caring soul.  Mark falls in love with Amanda, but it’s too much for her to handle and she leaves him.  To replace her, Mark hires Vera (Moon Bloodgood), who 1) is already in a relationship, and 2) is completely unflappable.

When he’s asked to do the sex life article, Vera pushes Mark’s gurney around town as he interviews others with physical challenges.  (The motorized gurney from his college days was lost because of several accidents; as Mark admits in voiceover narration, “I really couldn’t see where I was going.”)  Different from most quadriplegics, Mark still has feeling throughout his body and his organ functions.  He begins to think about losing his virginity.

His first stop is Father Brendan who, despite his own uncomfortable feelings about the conversation, urges Mark to try to accomplish his goal.  A therapist puts Mark in touch with a sexual surrogate who’s trained to help people overcome physical and/or mental problems with sexual intercourse.  Cheryl (Helen Hunt) is a middle-aged mother who’s in a long-term relationship with Josh (Adam Arkin).  She takes on Mark as a client for six sessions, the proscribed number of times that she can meet with him.

This film could have been a Lifetime TV movie, or it could have become a prurient sexploitation flick.  Instead it rises above that to become a meditation on humanity and love, thanks to a literate script by Ben Lewin, who also directed the movie, and a master’s class in acting from Hawkes and Hunt.  Lewin keeps the story grounded in reality.  He’s helped by excellent work by production designer John Mott and set decorator Sofia Jimenez in creating 1980’s Berkeley.

John Hawkes was an effective supporting actor for twenty-five years on television shows, including a supporting role on “Deadwood,” and in movies like The Perfect Storm.  Then came his breakout, Oscar-nominated role as Teardrop in Winter’s Bone, the movie that also made Jennifer Lawrence a star.  He continued doing (very good) supporting work in Martha Marcy May Marlene, Contagion, and is currently appearing in Lincoln.  As Mark, though, he takes center stage, and he holds it beautifully.  He’s the only real competition that Daniel Day Lewis has in the Best Actor Oscar race this year, and if it weren’t for Lincoln he’d be the odds-on favorite to win the award.

Helen Hunt has had a 40 year career, starting as a child actor on television before becoming a lead actress on the small screen with “Mad About You.”  That led to movie roles, including her Oscar-winning performance in As Good As If Gets, along with Twister, Pay It Forward, What Women Want, and Castaway.  For the past dozen years she’s only done a handful of smaller films.  Judging by her work in The Sessions, that’s been our loss.  There’s a tendency for reviewers to talk about an actor or actress being “brave” to take on a role that requires a fair amount of nudity, as this one does.  In reality it’s more that Hunt is a consummate professional who fully inhabits the character of Cheryl.  The times of the greatest intimacy in the movie are actually when the actors are clothed.

Macy is delightful as Father Brendan, and the other supporting roles do just that – provide strong support to the movie.  In particular, Jennifer Kumiyama shines as one of the physically-challenged people Mark interviews, who then assists with his sessions with Cheryl.  Kumiyama truly embodies Mark O’Brien’s spirit, as she was born with Arthrogryposis (AMC) and doctors told her parents she’d never use her limbs.  Since her childhood she’s been proving the doctors wrong, working to improve her mobility and show the ability within her.

Movies characters often casually have sex with each other and then go their separate ways, as if it was just a physical act.  The Sessions turns this around, for while the therapy must be kept solely on the physical level, the emotional and spiritual levels intrude.  This is a movie that deals with love and intimacy in a deep, multi-faceted way.  While Hawkes does an incredible job with the physical embodiment of O’Brien, the greater accomplishment is projecting O’Brien’s beautiful soul to the others in the film, and to the audience.  It is both touching and life-affirming, without a trace of saccharine.

4 M

I’d heard excellent reports about Martha Marcy May Marlene ever since it debuted at Sundance earlier this year.  As with most indie films, finding it outside of a festival can be difficult.  That’s why I’m grateful for chains of theaters such as Landmark that cater to independent movies – bless them.

After a few establishing shots, the movie shows Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) making a break for freedom from an agrarian cult she’s been caught up in.  The leader of the cult had changed her name to Marcy May, a common practice in cults to disassociate the inductee from their previous identity.  After a dash through the woods, she makes it to a nearby town and calls her sister to come pick her up.

From there the movie splits its time frame, looking at Martha’s time with her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and her husband Ted (Hugh Dancy) after her escape and contrasting it with Marcy May’s initiation into the cult under the control of Patrick (John Hawkes).  While Lucy doesn’t understand what happened to Martha during the years she disappeared, it’s clear she’s different.  Martha’s developed a knack for gardening, and when she decides to go swimming at the lake house where Lucy and Patrick are staying, Martha simply walks down to the dock, strips off her clothes, and dives in.

At the same time you see Marcy May slipping deeper into the cult family.  It’s seeking a utopian society that Patrick has modeled from different movements and cultures.  They haven’t yet reached their goal of self-sufficiency on their farm, so the group supplements their endeavor by stealing from wealthy homes nearby their upstate New York location.  As Marcy May sinks deeper into the cult, the violence quotient rises, until a moment that finally causes her break.

But even though she’s no longer physically among the cultists, Martha finds herself caught up in the behavior they’ve imprinted on her mind.  The revealing of the name Marlene shows how far she’d gone into their world.  It is a quietly chilling moment.  In the end the question is whether Martha has truly escaped, mentally or physically.

In effect, Martha Marcy May Marlene is a thriller, though it eschews the Hollywood set pieces to focus instead on character.  We’re drawn into Martha/Marcie May’s struggle as well as her paranoia.  Or is it paranoia?  Writer/director Sean Durkin’s feature debut doesn’t give simple answers, which makes it all the more disturbing.

Sarah Paulson effectively communicates Lucy’s long-suffering nature in relationship to her sister.  As Patrick, John Hawkes gives another riveting performance to match his Oscar-nominated turn last year in Winter’s Bone, though he clearly differentiates the roles.

The performance that holds the entire movie together is Elizabeth Olsen’s in the title role (or should it be ‘titles?’).  Much has been made in the press of her being the younger sister of those financial titans of cuteness, twins Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen.  Within a minute of her appearance on the screen, all of that is forgotten.  Elizabeth fully embodies both the physicality and the shattered psyche necessary to be Martha/Marcy May.  She can say some of the most hurtful lines yet retain the sympathy of the audience throughout the movie.  I’m as sure as anyone can ever be that she will receive an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

This is a disturbing movie, partly because it doesn’t give you the safety of Hollywood conventions when telling the story.  No car chases, no speeches about the sanctity of the individual – just a trip inside a very messed-up mind.  It is a trip that will haunt you.