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.

Rise, The Beloved Country

I’d missed Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom when it was in the theaters in 2013. It was a movie I’d wanted to see, since I’d lived in South Africa for two years during the time Apartheid was being dismantled. Thanks to Showtime, I finally got the chance to watch this excellent film.

The movie covers a majority of Mandela’s life, beginning with his Khosa manhood ritual up to his election as president of the multicultural South Africa. Early on Mandela was a lawyer who was more interested in his own success. When the African National Conference, which had been founded decades earlier, sought him out to be a leader of the movement he at first wanted nothing to do with the cause. Over time, however, he awakened to the plight of his people and others under the oppressive rule of the Afrikaaners (white South Africans of Dutch heritage, once called the Boers).

In 1948 the government codified apartheid as the law of the land, including restrictions on where blacks could live. They were confined to certain townships, which is where you have Soweto coming into being – the name was an acronym for South West Township, based on its location relative to Johannesburg. Mandela at first embraced peaceful protests, but when the government reacted harshly and with violence to the protests, Mandela embraced violence himself. After several acts of sabotage, Mandela was arrested along with the other leaders of the ANC. They faced the death penalty, but rather than make martyrs of the men the judge sentenced them to life imprisonment. They were taken to Robben Island, a low piece of rock out in the ocean near Capetown.

What’s refreshing about the movie, based on Mandela’s autobiography, is that it doesn’t sugarcoat him but instead presents a warts and all portrait of the man. Along with his passion for justice and equality, Mandela had a passion for the ladies, which led to the dissolution of his first marriage. The movie also doesn’t shy away from the black-on-black violence that almost derailed the peace process in the early 1990s. Screenwriter William Nicholson had dealt with biography before, when he wrote the play “Shadowlands” and later adapted it for the film version. He also did the screenplay for the Broadway musical Sarafina, which took place in South Africa. (Nicholson recently worked on the screenplay for Unbroken as well.)

Idris Elba delivers a towering performance as Mandela. He perfectly captures Mandela’s tones and inflection, though in a natural way. While he was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance, he was overlooked by the Oscars, which is unfortunate since it is an Oscar-caliber performance. He wouldn’t have won, since that was the year of Daniel Day Lewis’ embodiment of Lincoln, but he should have been nominated. There has been talk of Elba taking over that most iconic of roles, James Bond, if and when Daniel Craig hangs up his tux and Walther. While he might be a bit old by that time – he’s only 4 years younger than Craig – he would do an outstanding job, just as he does with any role he takes on.

There is another 007 connection with Long Walk to Freedom in that the role of Winnie Mandela is played by Naomie Harris, who played Moneypenny in Skyfall and will be back in the role next year in Spectre. Harris delivers a nuanced and fierce performance as Winnie, who was a polarizing figure and was eventually kicked out of the ANC because of scandals. Thanks to Nicholson’s intelligent script and Harris’ portrayal, the movie succeeds in making Winnie understandable. It is a tragedy that in their decades-long separation while her husband was in prison, Winnie came to embrace violence and revenge, even as Mandela outgrew them.

The movie shows how members of the white government finally came to understand that change was not only inevitable but imperative. The last leader of apartheid South Africa, F.W. DeKlerk, saw it as a holy calling, to heal the land. Had it not been for them, working in concert with Mandela, the history of South Africa might have resembled many of the other nations in Africa who fell into sectarian violence after the occupiers left. Instead of division, there was reconciliation; instead of revenge, there was forgiveness, and it was facilitated by a man who had been viewed as a terrorist. While it’s not mentioned in the film, one telling action when Mandela was inaugurated was that he invited his jailer from Robben Island to attend the event.

Director Justin Chadwick and Cinematographer Lol Crawley filmed the movie on location, and they capture the look of South Africa perfectly: the beauty of the veld, the depressing rough houses of the townships, the impressive cities, and more. During the credits you see photographs of Mandela’s life that were clearly used to guide the filming of scenes.

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom is a deep and rich story that gives the audience an clear view of the complex background and tensions that were woven into the thread of South Africa, leading up to the end of apartheid. I heartily recommend it.