Those who scale peaks
Acrophobes will want to stay home. Others are likely to find the Australian documentary “Mountain” an exhilarating vision of many of the world’s highest — and most gorgeously photogenic — peaks, and the intrepid sorts who set out to conquer them.
Director Jennifer Peedom (“Sherpa”) has brought together footage from the likes of climber/cinematographer Renan Ozturk, shot in more than two dozen countries. As if the scenery isn’t impressive enough, she has also scored the film with new and classical works performed by the Australian Chamber Orchestra, which almost amounts to overkill.
For much of the film’s 74 minutes, we feel giddily airborne, with gliding shots of magnificent and often snowy peaks, sometimes traversed by one or more tiny specks that turn out to be humans. Depending on your feelings about mountain climbing, these seem to be among the bravest people on the planet — or the most foolhardy.
And these mountain people don’t just soldier along on foot. They ascend sheer rock faces using all four limbs; some of them blaze downhill on bikes or skis; some daredevils fly off the mountains in wingsuits; others actually walk a tightrope between two peaks. Pick your poison!
The overall tone is awed and laudatory, which may rub some viewers the wrong way. Willem Dafoe delivers narration taken from Robert Macfarlane’s “Mountains of the Mind,” which occasionally strays in the direction of the trite or overwrought.
The film doesn’t entirely ignore critics who lament the destructive environmental effects of humans using mountains for sport. Accounts have been published of what amounts to “traffic jams” of climbers on celebrated peaks like Everest. But the issue might have been given more emphasis here. To its credit, though, the narration does suggest that at least some of these impetuous folks may be motivated by a combination of narcissism and nihilism.
Early in the movie, it’s acknowledged that until a very few centuries ago, the idea of climbing a mountain for recreation or an adrenaline charge was unheard of. Mountains were counted as hostile and foreboding, and climbing them akin to madness. There are moments in “Mountain” when that perspective seems altogether reasonable.