Visual feast explores Meru
Documentary, directed by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. 90 minutes. Opening Friday at the Varsity. 14A Maybe you’ve always dreamed of climbing a near-vertical mountain that slices into the clouds.
Or perhaps you can’t fathom why these elite athletes, some might say screwballs, would even want to try.
In either case, visual feast Meru, winner of the Sundance U.S. Documentary Audience Award, satisfies these curiosities.
Climbers Jimmy Chin (co-director of the doc with wife Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi), Conrad Anker and Renan Ozturk aimed to be the first to conquer Meru’s punishing Shark’s Fin face, a route on the Himalayan peak considered by many impossible to climb.
Using lightweight cameras, Chin and Ozturk capture both the astonishing views from the top of the world and soul-searching moments inside a cramped tent dangling from the side of the mountain like a used tea bag. Meru Peak presents more than 6,660 metres of “gnarly” climbing up ice walls and perilous granite, including a 300-metre slick rock face to the summit that appears free of handholds while going straight up.
Unlike the better-known (and higher, not that this matters) Everest, there are no Sherpas or fixed ropes to help. The 100 kilograms worth of everything needed to make the ascent and survive the 10 days or so to complete it must be carried on climbers’ backs.
“Meru is the anti-Everest,” explains Into Thin Air author and climber Jon Krakauer, an engaging onscreen presence who explains Meru’s near-mythic draw.
Anker (who unsuccessfully attempted Shark’s Fin in 2003) and climbing partner Chin have not only gone up Everest multiple times, Chin has skied down it. With new team member Ozturk, they couldn’t wait to try to scale the Shark’s Fin in 2008, filming every gruelling step.
Bad weather grounds them for days, depleting resources. What was supposed to take a week stretches to 20 days, putting the battered, ex- hausted and near-starving climbers at risk, eventually forcing them to stop just shy of the summit. It’s a heartbreaking moment as Anker takes a last look up at the prize, then wordlessly begins his inching descent.
Perils are not confined to the mountain. Months later, while shooting a commercial featuring extreme snowboarding with Chin, Ozturk is catastrophically injured. Chin is later caught in an avalanche.
In 2011 they try a repeat attempt, burdened with the added anxiety that Ozturk’s neck injuries put him in danger of suffering a stroke at such punishing altitude.
Friendship, obsession and loyalty make risking everything to scale a mountain seem like their only choice, giving context to Meru and framed by Chin’s and Ozturk’s sublime and terrifying images.