Because It's There
Friday evening, I went to Martinis and IMAX with a very nice group of people. Paper Towel Lover arranged the evening. I had a Mochatini, watched the film and then we went to Fellini's afterwards for some good pizza. My review of the movie is in no way a reflection on Paper Towel Lover or Martinis and IMAX. If I had to do it all over again, I would not hesitate to do so.
So, about the movie "Everest." I think it was supposed to be an inspirational film. I did not find it to be so. Instead it highlighted how stupid extreme mountain climbers are. The first person to reach the summit of Mount Everest was Sir Edmund Hillary. But popular history forgets to tell you that the famous white guy had a brown (yellow?) man along with him - Tenzing Norgay. This film followed an expedition team which included the son of Tenzing Norgay, Tashi Tenzing.
OK, so that's a little inspirational. The son of one of the first men to reach the summit is following in his father's footsteps. I'm sure he's always lived in his father's shadow and now he's going to make a name for himself. And they kept showing re-enacted scenes of a little Asian boy looking up worshipfully to his father. Yeah, OK, that pulls at your heartstrings. Little Asian boys are stinking adorable.
Another member of the team is an American guy who is going on this trip as his honeymoon. There's some great shots of him and his fiance racing their mountain bikes in the American West along insanely dangerous precipices. Thrilling? Sure. Idiotic? You bet. These scenes were accompanied by a voice track of the fiance telling us that her man thinks a 5 hour bike ride is a "warm up." Honey, you've got no one to blame but yourself.
The last interesting member of the team is a Spanish woman. We meet her as she dangles by her pinky from a rocky outcrop over the ocean in Mexico. The human interest angle for her is that if she reaches the top, she will be the first Spanish woman to do so. First. Craziest. What's the difference?
They finally go to Everest. There are three different places where they have to stop to get acclimatized to the altitude. As they tell us, if you just took someone straight from sea level and dropped them off on the summit, they would die within hours because they couldn't get enough oxygen to their lungs. Your blood has to "thicken" with red blood cells to carry more oxygen. In fact, above a certain point of the mountain, there's not enough oxygen in the air for a helicopter's blades to "grab on to" to fly. (Kimi and I very inappropriately laughed at that point in the movie.)
Once they reach the second camp, the honeymooning wife settles in 'cause she ain't wickity whacked enough to attempt this climb. There is a large climbing party ahead of them which includes at least one "good friend" of the honeymooning man. This is where the movie turns dramatic. That party gets caught in a surprise storm. Several climbers die. The "good friend" is stuck on the mountain in the dark and cold. They patch through a signal so that he is able to talk to his 7-months pregnant wife back in their home. They select a name for their unborn child. He dies that evening from exposure to the cold. Another climber who had been left for dead somehow makes it down the mountain. He gets choppered out (this is where we did our inappropriate laughing at the "not enough air to fly in" comment) to safety. He loses both hands to frostbite and has severe damage to major systems.
I had to mention all this because the team we were following was emotionally affected by this tragedy. But not enough to stop their climb. When the weather cleared, they kept going. They had to walk by the frozen dead bodies of climbers that they were friends with, but they chose to continue. That is what convinced me that they were all off their rockers. There is a time when you just have to say, "This isn't worth it. My life is more valuable than this silly accomplishment." The honeymooning wife didn't want her new husband to go on. So what did she do? She told him to "climb it like you've never climbed it before." Dude. Even she was insane.
They made it to the top, one of them even did so without the assistance of oxygen. But I was not impressed.
They were on the mountainside a total of 9 weeks. No showers. No toilets. Only ice, wind and death. Not my idea of a vacation and definitely not a honeymoon.
Dinner was decidedly more interesting. I had a nice long chat with a lovely girl from sorta my old side of town. She was a good conversationalist and not nutters.
So, about the movie "Everest." I think it was supposed to be an inspirational film. I did not find it to be so. Instead it highlighted how stupid extreme mountain climbers are. The first person to reach the summit of Mount Everest was Sir Edmund Hillary. But popular history forgets to tell you that the famous white guy had a brown (yellow?) man along with him - Tenzing Norgay. This film followed an expedition team which included the son of Tenzing Norgay, Tashi Tenzing.
OK, so that's a little inspirational. The son of one of the first men to reach the summit is following in his father's footsteps. I'm sure he's always lived in his father's shadow and now he's going to make a name for himself. And they kept showing re-enacted scenes of a little Asian boy looking up worshipfully to his father. Yeah, OK, that pulls at your heartstrings. Little Asian boys are stinking adorable.
Another member of the team is an American guy who is going on this trip as his honeymoon. There's some great shots of him and his fiance racing their mountain bikes in the American West along insanely dangerous precipices. Thrilling? Sure. Idiotic? You bet. These scenes were accompanied by a voice track of the fiance telling us that her man thinks a 5 hour bike ride is a "warm up." Honey, you've got no one to blame but yourself.
The last interesting member of the team is a Spanish woman. We meet her as she dangles by her pinky from a rocky outcrop over the ocean in Mexico. The human interest angle for her is that if she reaches the top, she will be the first Spanish woman to do so. First. Craziest. What's the difference?
They finally go to Everest. There are three different places where they have to stop to get acclimatized to the altitude. As they tell us, if you just took someone straight from sea level and dropped them off on the summit, they would die within hours because they couldn't get enough oxygen to their lungs. Your blood has to "thicken" with red blood cells to carry more oxygen. In fact, above a certain point of the mountain, there's not enough oxygen in the air for a helicopter's blades to "grab on to" to fly. (Kimi and I very inappropriately laughed at that point in the movie.)
Once they reach the second camp, the honeymooning wife settles in 'cause she ain't wickity whacked enough to attempt this climb. There is a large climbing party ahead of them which includes at least one "good friend" of the honeymooning man. This is where the movie turns dramatic. That party gets caught in a surprise storm. Several climbers die. The "good friend" is stuck on the mountain in the dark and cold. They patch through a signal so that he is able to talk to his 7-months pregnant wife back in their home. They select a name for their unborn child. He dies that evening from exposure to the cold. Another climber who had been left for dead somehow makes it down the mountain. He gets choppered out (this is where we did our inappropriate laughing at the "not enough air to fly in" comment) to safety. He loses both hands to frostbite and has severe damage to major systems.
I had to mention all this because the team we were following was emotionally affected by this tragedy. But not enough to stop their climb. When the weather cleared, they kept going. They had to walk by the frozen dead bodies of climbers that they were friends with, but they chose to continue. That is what convinced me that they were all off their rockers. There is a time when you just have to say, "This isn't worth it. My life is more valuable than this silly accomplishment." The honeymooning wife didn't want her new husband to go on. So what did she do? She told him to "climb it like you've never climbed it before." Dude. Even she was insane.
They made it to the top, one of them even did so without the assistance of oxygen. But I was not impressed.
They were on the mountainside a total of 9 weeks. No showers. No toilets. Only ice, wind and death. Not my idea of a vacation and definitely not a honeymoon.
Dinner was decidedly more interesting. I had a nice long chat with a lovely girl from sorta my old side of town. She was a good conversationalist and not nutters.
3 Comments:
Nutty people again? This looks like a new intrest of your's Hn'B.
Enough about the movie already,
who really cares -
how were the martinis?!?!?!
I agree. I mean its good to have goals & stuff but who wants to tell their child, "Sorry your father isn't here to play ball with you, RAISE YOU, be at your wedding, etc cause he wanted to say he'd climbed a mountain instead" Very selfish..in my humble opinion.
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