Directed byJimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
USA, 2015
There’s a fine line between determination and obsession, and it’s often ambiguous as to where the subjects of Meru, a new documentary about three men’s ambition to climb one of the world’s most treacherous mountains, find themselves. In fact, it often seems as if the men themselves don’t know, nor do their families, and it barely seems to matter: they have their fixations, and they will remain as such regardless of how they’re classified.
The three men are Conrad Anker, Renan Ozturk, and Jimmy Chin (who also co-directed the film with Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi), professional climbers for whom one goal appears to subsume all others: reaching the top of the titular mountain. As they explain in the film’s opening moments, with the aid of writer Jon Krakauer (author of Into Thin Air, a gripping bestseller about the environmental disaster during his attempt to climb Mount Everest), Meru has never been successfully summited, and it’s known by climbers around the world as one of the world’s most difficult mountains. The reasons for this include its height, the weather conditions around it, and the variety of terrains it contains, but what seems to be most important to the men is the mere fact of it being known as unsurmountable.
To them, of course, it’s a fact that means they have to give it a shot, and the first act (Meru is neatly divided into three) finds them doing just that, with surprisingly little exposition leading up to the climb. Of the three, Anker is the veteran, Chin is the younger but still seasoned professional, and Ozturk is the rookie, but experience seems to matter little once they’re on the mountain. For all three, it’s simply a matter of survival, and they need all they’ve got to achieve it during the treacherous first climb.
Although they are able to survive, they have to cut their climb short 100 meters from the peak to do so, as poor conditions and dwindling supplies leave them in fear for their lives. On the bright side, the failure provides the grist necessary for a feature film, and the exposition-heavy second act provides context about both the men’s personal history with the mountain and their various reasons for needing to give it another shot.
There’s Anker’s desire to realize his mentor’s dream, and Ozturk’s need to prove to himself that he’s fully recovered from a accident in Jackson Hole which brought him to the edge of death. But most revealing among the motivations for climbing Meru is Chin’s, which concerns his mother: although she’d struggled with his decision to become a professional climber, she made him promise he wouldn’t die before her. Once she passed away, Chin explains, he no longer had any obligations regarding his death, leaving him to pursue Meru as he wished.
Meru Expedition, Garwhal, India
It’s a striking quote, and one which provides a hefty bit of insight into the mentality of Chin, Anker, Ozturk, and their ilk. Although they don’t seem to be committed to realizing their goals at any cost (i.e. their first decision to abandon climbing Meru), it appears to be their families which keep them from taking risks more than any of their individual desires to keep living. Life for them, Meru reveals, doesn’t have much point if they can’t achieve their goals.
While burying this sort of exposition of character motivations and traits in the second act rather than earlier in the film comes across as a bit of a strange choice, Meru manages to pull it off through the inherent physicality and power of the story it tells. Although we don’t know much about the men when we first see them together, the sheer awe provoked by the feat they’re attempting is more than enough to keep the film riveting. On top of this, the beauty of the cinematography (courtesy of Chin and Ozturk) and the wit of Krakauer help to engage the viewer even further. By the time the first attempt fails, you want to know more about the guys who you just watched attempt what seemed like a crazy thing. Even once further exposition is provided, they still might seem to fall short of sanity to many, but Meru isn’t shy about providing a look at their madness.
It’s this look which ultimately makes the film what it is. There’s hardly a shortage of wilderness survival stories, but Meru succeeds above others by providing insight into why its subjects want to survive in the wilderness. Whether or not these reasons seem legitimate will vary from viewer to viewer, but Meru at least does its audience the favor of giving them the material they need to decide.
