The Summit (IFC Films, R)

The Summit just bites off more than it can chew.

At the end of The Summit, the new film about the K2 climbing disaster of 2008, I had to admit there is nothing I could think of that would remotely make me understand why people risk their lives to get to the top of some frozen peak. The rigors of climbing the world’s second highest mountain (Everest being the first) include falling ice the size of a small shopping mall, frostbite, snow blindness, inability to breathe, organ failure and just plain old falling — Falling a long way, or maybe sliding down the mountain until you hit something jagged enough to stop your fall. It takes a special kind of crazy to want to do this and yet every year hundreds of people attempt the climb; one in four die.

The Summit is a chilling movie. Based on the real events from 2008, it tries to recreate what happened using actual footage from the climb, interviews with the survivors, and the story of the first team to successfully climb the mountain in 1954. The ambitions of the movie — trying to tell both the story of the accident, exposing the treachery of mountain climbing (on and off the peak), and righting perceived wrongs — is hard to bare while also watching actual footage (or recreated events) of self-imposed suffering. What director Nick Ryan tries to do is to explain the climbers’ love for a sport that is at its most dangerous on K2, the various personalities that make up a team, and the turmoil that can ensue. The question of what happened and why is the biggest struggle for the film, and it is often a moving target.  

Instead of a telling the story chronologically, Ryan chooses to jump about a bit too much. Just like when you are trying to drive in a snowstorm, these added curves do the movie no favor. While the story of the 1954 team’s successful ascent, told by the lone survivor Fosco Maraini, is riveting, it proves a distraction while trying to prove the point that climbing is treacherous in more than one way — for years Maraini was denied credit for his essential help in the team’s success. At least their story was mostly told in black and white news footage of the time to keep things in order. Even more confusing was a flashback to a previous near death experience by one of the 2008 climbers, Ger McDonnel. The Summit tries to explain the muddied details of why the 2008 catastrophe happened, give credit to the heroic climbers who saved lives while losing their own, and perhaps even some scores of less than reliable leaders. It does a fair job of that, but it also leaves the viewer wanting more.

There is a movie out there about the treachery and bravery of mountain climbing, but The Summit just bites off more than it can chew. Amazing scenery and incredible personal stories aside, The Summit misses its mark. | Jim Dunn