Just when you were fed up with the whole idea of people climbing Mount Everest like it was a rollercoaster at Magic Mountain, documentarian Anthony Geffen reclaims a significant aspect of the mountain's storied history.
The 1999 discovery of British explorer George Mallory's frozen body in Everest's famous "Death Zone" by American mountaineer Conrad Anker, lays down the parameters for a biographical essay on Mallory and the love his life, his wife Ruth, whose photo Mallory promised to leave on the mountain's peak.
Mallory's heartfelt letters to Ruth during their time apart provide a contained spectrum of his poetically expressed romanticism undaunted by the aspiration that consumes him.
Amazing archive film footage from Mallory's 1924 expedition, cherished photo stills, and a roundelay of gifted narrators that includes Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Hugh Dancy, and Natasha Richardson combine to create a time-flipping effect to put the viewer in touch with the momentous breadth of its subject.
Never for a second is there any doubt that the prime motivation of the film is to assess the probability that George Mallory and Sandy Irvine were indeed the first men to make it onto the peak of Mount Everest. The photo of Ruth that Mallory promised to deposit at the mountain's top was not with his corpse, while other possessions like letters, an altimeter, and a watch were still with him.
George Mallory will likely best be remembered for his response to a New York journalist who asked him, "Why climb Everest?" Mallory's iconic reply, "Because it's there," is an enigmatic concept that the film eloquently embraces, and illuminates on a visceral and intellectual level.
Rated PG. 93 mins.
