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‘The Summit’ has considerable power, but limits itself in the end

The new mountain-climbing documentary The Summit has a few talking-head interviews, but is mostly dominated by dramatic re-enactments, much like the superb 2003 climbing doc Touching the Void. That’s really the best way to tell a story that takes place on the side of a mountain: talking heads or still photographs cannot deliver the pain of frostbite or the oxygen-depriving atmosphere inside the “death zone” above 8,000 meters. But where Touching the Void was very much about the isolation and loneliness of enduring the elements atop a mountain, The Summit explores how too many people can wreck the delicate process of climbing, and how they can obscure the truth of disaster and survival.

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