Review: 'Meru'

This distinctive documentary offers a rare glimpse of three determined mountaineers and their relentless ambition to climb one of the most notorious landmarks world, Meru Peak Mountain.

Mountaineer, filmmaker and National Geographic photographer Jimmy Chin is the main focus for new American documentary Meru, co-directed by Chin and his wife, documentary filmmaker Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi (A Normal Heart, 2003). The film follows Chin and fellow climbers Conrad Anker and Renan Ozturk who, in 2008, attempted to climb the infamous 'Shark's Fin' - the highest point of the North Indian Meru Peak Mountain at 21,850 feet – but were unsuccessful.

Vowing to conquer Meru for the second time, the film centers on their journey as they succumb to starvation, trench foot and frostbite; risking their lives every step of the way on a landmark that has met more failures than attempts.

Chin is by no means the sole heart of this documentary with both Anker and Ozturk offering a unique and crucial depth to the film's underlying themes. A memorable scene sees Anker recall the life-altering moment in which he discovered the body of missing British mountaineer George Mallory, who disappeared off the foots of Mount Everest in 1924. All three mountaineers undergo severe personal and professional tragedies, authentically emphasising the perils of climbing and the lives that are put at risk everyday.

Meru follows a line of impressive and critically helmed documentaries such as Touching the Void (2003) and The Wildest Dream (2010) and arrives shortly after the recently released Sherpa (2015): all of which offer a unique and staggering insight into the world of mountaineering. However, it is safe to say that not since The Crash Reel (2013) has a film demonstrated the true authenticity and dangers of outdoor sports with its sheer cinematic vigour, understandably making it the recipient of the U.S. Audience Documentary Award at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

Told through a series of interviews and archive footage – remarkable and alarming, if not slightly glitchy – Meru is not a typical sports documentary by any sense of the word, as it does not fall victim to the hero-helming that is so often seen within this genre. The film is an electrifying, terrifying, and saddening documentary that, at times, enforces the viewer to feel as though they shouldn't even be watching. The film breaks the molds of conventional sports documenting, allowing the viewer to undergo a variety of emotions that non-climbers may not think possible.

Mountaineer and author Jon Krakauer describes Meru Peak Mountain as the “Anti-Everest” of climbs. To be given an opportunity to bear witness to any of that, is definitely one to be taken.

4/5