Everest: IMAX is the kind of documentary you would expect to get out of a forty-five minute documentary released in 1998. The movie is pretty straightforward, it follows three climbers that go to Everest with an IMAX film crew. The climbers are Jamling Tenzing Norgay, the son of Tenzing Norgay, Ed Viesturs from the United States, and Araceli Segarra, the first Spanish woman to climb Everest.

The documentary focuses heavily on the struggles faced in climbing Everest, as viewers learn of different parts of what it takes to summit, including acclimatization, the severe cold, and the different challenging and technical parts of climbing, including the ice fall, Lhotse face, and the Hillary step. Really, this documentary would be a good introduction to someone who does not know a lot about Everest and high altitude mountaineering. It is a very basic and easy to understand movie. The movie will hit on the surface level issues that come up on Mount Everest.

One way this is seen is in the motivations each person has to climb Everest. Seeing as this is a film about climbers in the mid-90s, it is not surprising that they all have personal reasons for climbing. Jamling Norgay, for example, was climbing because, as he said, “It is in [his] blood,” and he had wanted to climb since he was a young boy, because of the legacy of his father. Araceli Segarra, on the other hand, just said that climbing was her passion, it was something she loved and had a strong desire to do. Although, with this as part of the documentary, the movie does not give any notion to other reasons for mountaineering, like that of national pride or personal acclaim. The focus for the mountain climbers motivation was definitely set on each climbers own personal reasons, and nothing else.

This documentary was also filmed in 1996, and the climbers and film crew were actually on the mountain during the ’96 disaster. It was refreshing to get another perspective on this disaster, rather than just that of Jon Krakauer. Of course, this documentary does not dive into the causes of the disaster a lot either, but is there as what seems to be an honoring of those who died that day in May. This is not wrong to do either, it was good on the part of the film and editing crew to add these comments on the disaster to the movie. Especially Ed Viesturs relationship with Rob Hall, and that he broke down and cried as he found Hall’s body on the way up for his summit attempt. There is also a scene where Segarra is crying over what just happened. This is an effective reminder of the great challenges that come with climbing, and how close to death one really is up on Everest. These scenes really help to bring reality back to the danger of high-altitude mountaineering. It is not just a walk in the park, it is incredibly dangerous business that should not be taken lightly.

There are a few things about this documentary that I did not like as much though. One of the aspects of the film that was bothersome was the way it displayed Nepal and India. Really, it comes off with kind of an Orientalist viewpoint. It was by no means overtly racist, there is no going outright and saying anything hateful towards the Nepalese or Indian people. But it does present these two countries as timeless and changeless. The movie begins with a camera panning over candles being lit in a dark room, with music that sounds eastern, and the narrator begins by describing a “place above all others,” then it cuts to a view of Mount Everest, with what looks like maybe a buddhist temple in front of it. The entire beginning scene feels like the viewer is being taken back to a place that is ancient and unchanged, where temples are still used. Not to say that parts of this are not an important part of the culture in Nepal, but the opening sequence of the movie really was aiming to make Everest feel like a place distant an impervious to the changing times. This timelessness and changelessness is really fits into Orientalism, and making this part of the world as something else, and other, where things are not even similar to the modern world.

Besides being slightly Orientalist, the film also does not do a lot to hit on any surrounding issues with climbing at Mount Everest. It almost neglects the environmental impacts that climbing has had on the mountain region. There is no mention of the incredible amounts of waste, like that of oxygen canisters left strewn all over the mountain, and does not mention the impacts of that climate change may have on Everest and climbing enterprises there. It kind of comes off like everything on Mount Everest is “peachy-keen.” There is no problems that come with high numbers of mountaineers coming every year it seems. Instead of even remotely addressing these issues, the documentary just ignores them like they are not even there.

All in all, it is not an absolutely horrible movie. As mentioned before, it is pretty basic, it would probably be a good movie to watch for someone who is just beginning to learn about high-altitude mountaineering, and literally knows nothing of Mount Everest, except that it is the tallest mountain in the world. But the movie does not go beyond that. It does not hit on any issues that come with the climbing economy on Everest, and also has a subtle Orientalism thrown in there, that could encourage people to believe that Everest is in a region that has been unchanged by time, except for the climbers that come to the mountain. It is not a bad movie to spend forty-five minutes watching, but should not be something to bank a lot of knowledge about Mount Everest on either.