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“Because it’s there” is the famous, possibly apocryphal, reply attributed to British mountaineer George Mallory when asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest. Unlike present-day climber Jim Morrison, Mallory didn’t
also want to ski down it. But doesn’t the same non-answer apply? Why are certain people compelled toward any of these reckless, perilous, barely possible feats? If it’s just because they can, should they? These are the questions that will be on the minds of many viewers watching “Everest: The Other Side,” a gleaming, would-be rousing documentary portrait of Morrison, his late partner Hilaree Nelson, and a shared Everest ski-mountaineering dream that wound up taking her life.
But those questions are weakly and only intermittently asked by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the formerly married duo who won an Oscar for the giddy spectacle of “Free Solo,” their 2018 film about the similarly ambitious daredevil rock climber Alex Honnold. “Everest: The Other Side” aims for that film’s level of slack-jawed exhilaration: Everest itself is shot with sweeping, reverential grandeur, as it can hardly fail to be; Morrison’s eventual hard-won scaling of it is triumphantly depicted, as is his wild, gliding descent. But it’s hard to thrill to any of this when our minds are on the woman who died attempting to do the same thing, and the children she left behind. To Morrison, as well as to the filmmakers, this awful backstory makes something cathartic of his accomplishment. Many in the audience, however, will query the point of it all.
Nelson, in fact, was more self-searching than the film around her — which began development as a markedly different story, following the couple’s joint thrill-seeking mission with the same degree of awed excitement that colored “Free Solo’s” portrayal of Honnold. “People ask, ‘How do you find the balance,’ and I want to punch them,” says Nelson in interview footage, referring to the conflict she felt between her maternal obligations to her sons Grayden and Quinn, 11 and 13 respectively at the start of filming, and her urge to follow her bliss as a ski-mountaineer, knowing the dangers involved. Later, she resumes the subject: “What I can do is love my kids today when I see them. What else can I do?”
Those words haunt proceedings after, around the half-hour mark, Vasarhelyi and Chin reveal her fate: On September 26, 2022, while skiing with Morrison in Nepal, Nelson was caught in a small avalanche, and fell nearly 6,000 feet to her death. It’s a turn of events that the film rather distastefully presents as a twist, having hitherto given no indication to the uninformed that Nelson — seemingly a vibrant, driving subject of the story — is no longer with us. But even if you know what’s coming, it’s a wrench, of the kind that you think might steer “Everest: The Other Side” into more introspective territory. The filmmakers were close friends of the couple: Surely, one thinks, they must have complex feelings about their role in documenting the primal adrenalin rush of such sports over their self-serving riskiness, just as Morrison, in the wake of the tragedy, may wonder what it was all for.
But if these concerns are felt, they’re barely admitted, as the remainder of the documentary celebrates determination over doubt, finding first a spiritual victory in continuing the quest, and a physical one in completing it. The show must go on, even if said show is skiing down the north face of Everest — something that has never been done before, which in the circumstances, wouldn’t strike most people as a good enough reason to do it. Morrison, whom we gradually learn has experienced more bereavement by tragic misadventure than any one man should bear, is fixated on the idea that securing this world-first would be both a personal vindication and a tribute to the memories of those he’s lost.
In his state of mourning, one can see how this narrative might make sense. But the film co-signs it with a strangely gung-ho spirit, as Chin — himself a father of two — joins the mission with scant discussion of the potential hubris of this decision. Vasarhelyi, seemingly a less hands-on presence in this project, voices a few more misgivings, at one stage pointedly asking her husband how many people who have previously been guests at their dinner table are now dead. (It is not mentioned in the film, but the filmmakers filed for divorce last year.) But for the most part, “Everest: The Other Side” continues to track the progress of Morrison and Chin — accompanied by a sizable camera crew and a rather more circumspect team of sherpas whose voices are largely sidelined — as though chronicling a nobly epic expedition.
And if you allow yourself to be guided only by the film’s stunning mountain vistas — those vast slopes, the uninterrupted pelt of brilliant snow atop them, the neon-yellow punctuation marks of the men’s tents and gear — and the full-tilt orchestral push of Caroline Ho’s score, you might get caught up in the romantic, near-fantastical folly of the enterprise, as befits a film presented, like much of Vasarhelyi and Chin’s previous work, under the National Geographic documentary banner.
But that requires significant compartmentalization of information that “Everest: The Other Side” has already offered us: the death of Nelson, the heartbroken testimonials of her now near-adult children, and a near-fatal injury sustained on the venture by Nepalese guide Pur Bahadur “Yukta” Gurung. (In a further gut-punch, the closing credits feature a posthumous tribute to Gurung: He died in an avalanche just a month before the doc’s Venice premiere.) It’s difficult to feel overly inspired by the eventual capture of a thrill that has fatally escaped many others; we’re simply left to wonder where Morrison’s insatiable yen will lead him next, and whether that, for better or worse, will be the final summit.
