In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit I am something an Everest junkie, and will read or watch just about anything connected to Himalayan mountaineering.

I am also a huge, huge fan of David Breashears’ IMAX Everest film starring Ed Viesturs and the team that was on the mountain during the deadly climbing season of 1996.  If I came across that film playing on Dick Tracy’s wristwatch, I’d find myself glued to even that postage-stamp sized screen.

So when I got the invitation for an IMAX screening of The Wildest Dream: The Conquest of Everest, starring controversial climber Conrad Anker, how could I possibly refuse? 

Never mind that the film wasn’t actually shot in IMAX, or that it’s not, properly speaking, an actual documentary.  It’s kind of Himalayan reality TV, with high-def camera crews on hand to capture Anker’s staged recreations of George Mallory’s final assault on Everest in 1924, and his attempt to free-climb the legendary “Second Step” of Everest’s north ridge, the obstacle which most likely—most likely—turned Mallory and climbing partner Sandy Irvine back before summiting.

But I digress, in a way.  There’s a ton of mountaineering history behind this film, and even a little cinematic history as well.  Ever since Mallory and Irvine disappeared in the third British Everest expedition, speculation about their odds of summiting prior to their deaths has varied widely.  Their last known position on the north ridge was somewhere in the neighborhood of 27,000 feet (depending on which version of sole eyewitness Noel Odell’s own recollections was actually correct) and it has been impossible to entirely rule out either of the major options: success or failure.

But in 1999, Anker was a last-minute addition to a speculative expedition that set out to recovery the body of Irvine—and instead found Mallory himself.  The story of that expedition has been contentiously told elsewhere: online, in print, and on video.

What that expedition failed to do, however, was answer the key Mallory question: would it have been technically possible—from a purely mountaineering point of view—for Mallory and Irvine to have surmounted the Second Step and pressed on to the summit?

In spite of a fairly settled conclusion in his own account of the 1999 expedition, the question has obviously gnawed at Anker over the intervening decade because the Wildest Dream expedition sets out to answer that question once and for all—not definitively, but to Anker’s satisfaction.

To up the ante this time out, Anker’s team includes a young Himalayan neophyte, Leo Houlding, as Anker’s climbing partner—in an attempt to replicate the Mallory-Irvine pairing.  Further, the climbers were outfitted with replica clothing and equipment from Mallory’s era.  Ideally, the climbers would tackle the critical highest reaches of the North Ridge route in the replica gear as part of the challenge.

The movie earns high marks for documenting the Mallory saga.  With an all-star voice cast that includes Liam Neeson and his late wife Natasha Richardson as George and Ruth Mallory, letters and period writings from the pair (and others) accompany Ken Burns-style photo montages and newsreel footage to tell the tale of their ill-fated and tragic romance.  Interviews from Mallory’s descendents, Anker, and other Everest/Mallory experts round out the drier, technical part of the program.

The re-enactments of the 1999 expedition aren’t terribly convincing, however, especially for those familiar with the professional and ethical squabbles associated with that effort; but from a historical documentation standpoint, the film nonetheless excels at putting us right on the slopes of Everest for sorting that story out in a condensed and simplified fashion, and it completely nails the drama of finding out exactly what climbing in Mallory and Irvine’s gear might entail.  Wisely, the production team abandoned the idea of using the replicas aside from a few short high-altitude excursions.  While Mallory and Irvine might have been used to climbing in gabardine and hobnails, Anker and his partner were not—and the risk of frostbite or sliding off the mountain was simply too high.  But the sequences are no less stunning for the failed attempt.

Finally, it’s probably an excellent idea that the early stretches of the film feature a post-summit Anker.  Otherwise the tension that mounts during his unaided climb of the 90-foot-high rock face called the Second Step might just be too much for audiences.  The stakes of such technically challenging climbing are always high—but at 28,000 feet, well into the so-called Death Zone… well, only a handful of climbers would be so daring (foolhardy?) as to attempt such a thing.

Knowledgeable climbers, as Anker himself notes, will well know the significance of a fixed belay—which Mallory would have been climbing without—but try telling that to a lay audience.

Also try telling newbies that Anker isn’t the first to “perform” as Mallory on Everest (the honors there go to the British actor Brian Blessed), that Anker also tried free-climbing the Second Step in 1999 and (just barely) failed, or that Anker is almost certainly not the only climber to have succeeded in the attempt—and so what?  Those facts are probably best left out of what is most certainly Anker’s attempt to best not Everest but himself.

Why climb Everest?  Mallory famously answered, “Because it’s there.”  The real answer was probably, “Because it’s still there.”  Anker is drawn to Mallory because he’s driven by the same impulses: when you aim high and fail, and it’s within your power to try again, you simply go back for another round.

Never mind the details.

So my biases aside… Is this worth your ten or twenty bucks for a ticket?  I’d say probably yes.  I know way more about Everest than is likely good for me, but I still know an entertaining film when I see one.

The Wildest Dream is rated PG for “thematic elements involving hardships of climbing, and some historical smoking images.”  Hm.  How about just plain old intensity?  There are simply some nightmares you don’t want spawned in your children.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Greg attended a press screening of The Wildest Dream.