In the world of elite mountaineering, Mount Everest is apparently for wusses.
The world-class climbers in the documentary “Meru” go to the top of Everest like we go to the gym, and with about as much enthusiasm.
One guy mentions that he once hauled a pair of skis to the top and carved his way back down, exhibiting a sort of nonchalant dismissal of the mountain.
Everest? Dude, I totally skied down that thing.
For a more formidable challenge, these men covet a slightly lower but more inaccessible Himalayan destination, the central peak of a three-headed monster named Meru.
The middle peak is just a few feet in altitude short of Everest and challenges climbers with a much tougher mix of terrain — ice, rock, and mixed areas of snow and stone. It’s most notorious feature is an outcropping called the Shark Fin.
This is a sheer, bowed face of granite with no handholds or footholds, meaning climbers have to hammer metal hooks into the face of unstable rock.
No one has ever climbed the Fin and reached the summit. Many have tried, including renowned climber Conrad Anker. As we see in “Meru,” he and colleagues Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk came very close in 2008.
Chin is also a photographer/filmmaker and chronicles this first attempt, giving us a rare first-person perspective of the never-filmed terrain and of the daring activities of the climbers.
The movie then switches to a section of exposition and biography, filling the gap between the first and second attempts. Chin tells of taking Ozturk on a dangerous photo shoot, where Ozturk nearly gets killed, sending Chin into depression and Ozturk to months of painful rehab.
Meanwhile, we learn that Anker has already lost buddies to climbing deaths, and this frames the drama of the second attempt at Meru. Again, Chin photographs the whole thing, so we have an exciting visual record of the second climb. What we don’t get, strangely are a few relevant details (unless I missed them).
The movie leaves you with the impression that the Anker expedition would be the first to reach the peak. This is incorrect. By this point, it has already been climbed, by Russian Valery Babanov, who took an easier route.
“Meru” also casts the trio as poet warriors on a spiritual quest — there are descriptions of Meru as a holy place, a grail of sorts for climbers. Typical piece of color: Ozturk doesn’t own a car, bums from mountain to mountain, and paints groovy pictures of the peaks he scales.
What we’re not told is that all three men are pretty well-off — successful career men who are salaried employees of North Face, although we might have guessed that, given how prominently the company’s logo is featured.
This in no way makes their ascent less dramatic, and there’s no shame in making money. They take the risk, they get the reward. The rewards of watching documentary movies, on the other hand, come from a less-subject flattering presentation of facts.
“Meru” 21/2
Rating: R, for language
Showing: Guild 45th
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