Meru [DVD]

All films about mountains and mountaineers deal with the physical rigours and hardships of climbing (as they must), whereas few have the philosophical depth to articulate the spiritual qualities that inspire climbers to do what they do, risking much (fingers, toes, sometimes their lives) to reach their goals. This film is therefore different and special because it is philosophical, opening the climbers up to us, making us empathise with who they are and why they are driven. A beautiful film in this sense in addition to being beautiful to look at.The climbers are three Americans (Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk) and the peak they wish to scale is Meru (6,310 metres) in the Indian Himalaya, whose snowmelt is the source of the Ganges. Meru is remote, forbidding and potentially deadly. The central part of it, the so-called Shark’s Fin, had never been climbed and this film shows why. It’s a journey into the heart of darkness, and we travel there with these three fearless men.At first I thought this couldn’t be true. Some shots are so exquisite as they climb you think there were additional members on a film crew with them. There were not. Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk handled all the cinematography. This alone is incredible when you think of what they had to scale.Meru is a knife edge, a blade of granite that shoots 2,000 metres skywards, curved like the end of an Arabian cutlass. To bivouac on it looks impossible and nearly is. Some nights the climbers huddle in their portaledge, basically a cot covered by a tent that hangs from the rockface. Needless to say, they are exposed to the elements (high winds, sub-zero temperatures, snow and ice). Their survival under such conditions is amazing. There are no routes, no established footholds once they reach the Shark’s Fin. There they must hammer their way upward centimetres at a time. Sometimes it takes six hours to only go 100 metres. A snail’s pace, in other words, but there is no other way.All three climbers have backstories we learn about.Conrad is their leader, mentor, Sensei, the one who follows in the footsteps of his own mentor who died in a crevasse on Denali in 1992, a man who tried to climb Meru twice in the 1980s but failed both times. All, in fact, have failed so far. The Shark’s Fin has defeated the world’s best technical big-wall climbers, some of whom had reached the conclusion it couldn’t be climbed. Conrad made three attempts to reach the summit (in 2003, 2008 and 2011). The first attempt demonstrated to him how unprepared he had been for the climb. He scaled the 4,000 metres needed to reach the Shark’s Fin, but once there was unable to proceed farther, lacking the proper equipment and enough supplies. He learned from this experience and came back with different partners and much better preparation in 2008.Jimmy Chin is Conrad’s righthand man. If Conrad is Sensei, Jimmy is the grasshopper. Jimmy will one day be a mentor, a Sensei of his own if he lives long enough to achieve it. Under him others will learn the fine art of climbing. Yes, fine art. Or the kind of craft that’s honed through a guild system of ideas and techniques handed down from one person to the next.Jimmy is second-generation American. His parents fled China during the Cultural Revolution. He and his elder sister Grace were born in the States. They are American in every way; it’s their parents who were Chinese. Jimmy is a free spirit. He loves the wide open spaces of America, especially its mountains. He skis, snowboards, climbs and photographs them. His cinematography is breathtaking. He’s made a name for himself as both a climber and photographer. Not many are able to combine the two, but Jimmy does. He grew up adoring Conrad. He was a legend, the very man who found Mallory’s body on Everest in 1999, Mallory encased in ice there above the death zone, killed in a fall near the summit in 1924. Conrad even found Mallory’s camera with the body. Had Mallory and Irvine reached the summit of Everest almost 30 years before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had? We’ll never know: the camera survived, but not the film.Jimmy never imagined he would climb with Conrad. But they got together in 2001 and found they were a perfect fit for one another. Conrad had lost his climbing partner (Alex Lowe) in an avalanche in Tibet in 1999. Conrad was hit by the same avalanche but miraculously survived. Alex had been like a brother to Conrad. They were equals, trusting one another 100 percent. The death of Alex broke Conrad up. He was a mess for months afterwards, a complete wreck with nowhere to turn but Jenny, Alex’s wife, whom he had been close to as a friend. Survivor’s guilt: Conrad responsible for the death of his friend, even if the thought was irrational. It was he, Conrad, the single drifter who should have died, not Alex, the loving husband and father of three. But Jenny and the boys — Alex’s young sons — saved Conrad. They loved him as part of the family. Alex was inexplicably gone, but Conrad remained. He and Jenny married and he adopted his best friend’s children. What a fate.Renan Ozturk is the young Turk among them. If Conrad and Jimmy are free spirits, Renan is free beyond them. He was nomadic, virtually homeless. He didn’t even have a van to live in and camp out of. But someone saw him freestyling up sheer rockfaces in Utah or Arizona. He was fearless and uncanny: no ropes, gear, safety nets. Just strong hands, fingers, feet to help him cling to solid rock. Someone in a helicopter eventually filmed him. In the footage Renan looks like Spiderman on the rockface. Who would attempt to do what he is doing? Conrad saw that film and knew he had to meet him.They bonded. They climbed together. Before the first Meru climb in 2008 Jimmy had never met Renan. But by that time Jimmy and Conrad had been climbing for seven years together. Jimmy says in the film that his golden rule is never to climb with anyone he does not have 100 percent trust in. He had never climbed with Renan before. So why did he break his own golden rule? Because it had one proviso: he can trust without question someone Conrad completely trusts. Thus, a neat circular equation in Jimmy’s mind: Jimmy trusts Conrad; Conrad trusts Renan; Jimmy trusts Renan.A poignant scene comes halfway through the film during the last stages of the 2008 climb. The team stand only 150 tantalising metres from the summit of the Shark’s Fin. But there is a serious problem. It’s late afternoon and they have been hiking for 18 hours (since midnight). They have little food and no gear for the night. Everything is down in the portaledge hundreds of metres below them. Jimmy focuses the camera on Conrad’s face. Exhaustion, sadness, disappointment. But one must be strong, sensible, see the wider picture. If they summit now there’s a high probability they’ll die of exposure on the mountain tonight. There are always risks: some worth taking, others not. The worst is not just to die, but to die and take your life from others who want, need and love you. Conrad turns from the camera, grimaces, leads Jimmy back down the mountain toward Renan below. They have failed but are alive (just barely). Renan’s feet are frostbitten and he has trench foot. For weeks afterward Jimmy is too weak to walk and uses a wheelchair. Conrad has survived but he’s emaciated. Had they not turned back when they did they surely would have died on the Shark’s Fin.On film Jimmy says he’s never coming back and you believe him. Why would he? How important is that final 150 metres of Earth?But events conspire to alter the face of the future.In the spring of 2011 Renan and Jimmy are nearly killed within four days of one another. Renan has a skiing accident, flying off a snowy cliff in Wyoming and cascading down the mountain. Jimmy finds him later in a pool of blood in the snow, his skull cracked open, at least two vertebrae broken. He’s airlifted off the mountain and only survives because of fast and expert medical attention.Four days later Jimmy returns to the same mountain. He and Renan had been photographing the downhill exploits of two world-class snowboarders. Jimmy is back to complete the shoot. But he nearly doesn’t. Skiing down the same slope Renan crashed on, Jimmy is trapped when an avalanche roars down the mountain and carries him with it. Somehow an uplift in the avalanche throws his body clear of it and he’s basically uninjured thousands of metres below. Strange miracle, four days after Renan’s own miracle of survival.Both were broken up mentally. Jimmy fell apart after his near-death experience and dropped out for some months. Renan was in rehabilitation at this time, his future too quite uncertain.Shortly before this time a world-class Slovenian climber had failed in his attempt to reach the summit of the Shark’s Fin. Conrad was easy about the Slovenian’s attempt, providing his team lots of information from Conrad’s previous two climbs on Meru. “If he makes it, we don’t have to go back,” was his thinking. But he failed. Everyone fails. In 2008, Conrad admitted to himself, “maybe it just can’t be done.” It’s all too much.But now with the way still open, the peak unsummitted, the gears began to turn and grind in Conrad’s mind again. He coaxed Jimmy out of hibernation. If Conrad was going back, he needed Jimmy to do it. There was no one else. Meanwhile the dream of Renan had been to return, it being the main thought that sustained him throughout his long and difficult recovery. The team, he reasoned, the threesome of 2008, needed to return together. At first Conrad and Jimmy thought this mad and impossible. All their friends and others in the climbing community said the same, a total mistake to even consider taking Renan. The risk of stroke and death at high altitude was considerable, though there are always unknowns at high altitude, even with healthy people.In the end Conrad told Jimmy it was his call. Jimmy had survived his near-death experience and Renan had survived his own. The bond became spiritual in Jimmy’s mind. Jimmy stood by Renan, trusting him, and Renan kept his dream alive by telling himself he would not let his comrades down. Thus through unbelievable adversity an even greater strength was forged between these two. Although psychologically and physically damaged, Jimmy and Renan were more determined than ever.The team of three returned to India in the summer of 2011. Again they made the long trek in from the village of Gangotri at over 3,000 metres to their base camp at 4,400. Day 1 of the climb started at 4,600 metres. By Day 11 they were at 6,000 metres (20,000 feet). On Day 12, October 2, 2011, Jimmy Chin stood on the summit of the Shark’s Fin at 6,310 metres (20,700 feet). Conrad Anker was next, followed by Renan Ozturk. All survived the descent. Both ascents (2008 and 2011) were filmed by Jimmy and Renan.Music in the film (by J. Ralph) is minimalist and beautiful. In fact everything about the film is exquisite. It deservedly won the Best Documentary Award at the Sundance Film Festival last year and was one of 15 films shortlisted for an Academy Award for Best Documentary.The great outdoor writer and mountaineer Jon Krakauer comments frequently during the film. He is like its presiding spirit, providing insight into what is happening on both the mountain and in the minds of the climbers.Regarding the call of the wild, he says this:“You’ve got to figure out who you are and what you are and what you’re here to do. And that’s a lot harder than it sounds, I think. But if you find that and do it, that’s enough to build a life around…If you happen to be a brain surgeon or a computer geek, that’s great: you’re benefitting the world, you’re getting rich, and you’ve found your calling. Now for those of us who are climbers, you know it’s easy to go ‘man, did I draw a bad card. I go out and beat myself to death on these walls and high peaks and make myself miserable.’ But you don’t get to pick what your passion is; it finds you. And to not do it, not be true to yourself, is the worst of the bad choices. But how do you find balance? There’s no good answer. Why do you expect there could be? That’s not the point. Life isn’t supposed to be easy, and it’s not.”But he concludes:“The rewards of climbing are huge. If you survive it, if your family comes out of it O.K., if everyone comes out of it, climbing is so worth it. The problem is, as we know, you don’t always come out of it O.K., people die, and you can’t justify it. That is the great dilemma.”But Conrad, Jimmy and Renan came out of it O.K. Everyone did — they and all those who love them. They reached the top and survived, the first human beings to do so, and this film pays beautiful tribute to what it took for them to do it.

Really interesting and stunning documentary. Great person centred stories too.

not too bad

One of the best documentaries I've seen. Highly recommended. Also very insipirational.

possibly the best film i've seen about the trials of mountaineering. It's more about the obsessive psychology and accepting the consequences of a dangerous sport than it is about the technicalities of climbing. Really well filmed and edited - a recommended watch whether you're into climbing or not.

Up there with the best mountaineering documentary’s, haven’t given it the full 5 stars as it’s not on my top top list such as touching the void

Great human story and achievement, superb filming...Loved it!

Good film