Film Review: Everest

Everest. Rated M (mature themes). 121 minutes. Directed by Baltasar Kormákur. Screenplay by William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy.

‘Because it’s there!’, a chorus of mountain climbers exclaim when they are asked why they want to climb to the top the world’s highest mountain.

Whether this comparatively short-sighted motivation provides adequate reason for why they choose to take on the well-documented horrors that await them on the ascent and descent from heights ‘equal to the cruising altitude of a 747’ – as their Adventure Consultants tour guide Rob Hall (Jason Clarke) points out – remains a point of conjecture long after the experience of this terrifying film begins to fade.

For someone who finds it hard enough walking up a flight of stairs, Everest is a confronting experience. Armchair Adventurists will also find themselves nodding knowingly at every heavily sign-posted calamity that befalls the ill-fated expedition, which exists of enthusiastic amateurs who are happily escorted, at great expense, to the precipice of life and death.

Within an excellent ensemble, Clarke’s performance as the passionate but ultimately flawed hero is outstanding. When Doug (John Hawkes), a quietly spoken mailman from America who failed to make it to the summit on a previous attempt begs Hall to be allowed to continue, you can see the fear that he might be making the wrong decision written all over his face.

As the less-adventurous guide Guy, whom Hall mocks mercilessly for taking his group on less death-defying climbs, Sam Worthington delivers some of his best work to date. Guy’s conflict between wanting to rescue his close friend while knowing that such an attempt could cost him his own life, is a deeply personal one that lesser actors would struggle to communicate as effectively as Worthington does.

Technically, Everest is a spectacular achievement. Under Kormákur’s inspired direction, cinematographer Salvatore Totino captures every aspect and every angle of the brutally unforgiving environment, while Mick Audsley’s superb editing rarely allows you to draw breath.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Unbroken

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Unbroken. Rated M (mature themes and violence). 137 minutes. Directed by Angelina Jolie. Screenplay by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, Richard LaGravenese and William Nicholson. Based on the book by Laura Hillenbrand. 

Verdict: An incredible story about the power of Faith. 

Since the end of hostilities in 1945, writers and filmmakers have turned to World War 2 as a source of rich dramatic material. The treatment of Prisoners of War by their Japanese captors has featured prominently, with The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (1983), and The Railway Man (2013) just three of the most well-known films to explore the subject. And unless you have been living under a rock for the last decade or so, you will know how gruesome that subject can be. 

While Jolie, cinematographer Roger Deakins, a quartet of writers and an outstanding ensemble of actors have undeniably made an excellent film, Unbroken struggles to bring any new insight or justification to the essential conflict, which it pursues with relentless, almost breathless, vigour.

Louis Zamperini’s (superbly portrayed by Jack O’Connell) story is an incredible one, and the best of Unbroken is when the film focuses on the extraordinary good fortune that ensured Zamperini’s continued survival against all the odds. It is little wonder that Zamperini made a pact with God to serve Him for the rest of his life if he was to survive the horrors that he endured on a daily basis – a pact Zamperini held to until he died in July last year.

Mutsuhiro Watanabe’s (Takamasa Ishihara) obsession with breaking Zamperini’s body and spirit becomes, simply, incomprehensible, and Unbroken’s bleak, brutal and unforgiving second act becomes harder and harder to watch. And then the reason crystallises. It is not a film about forgiveness in the same way that The Railway Man is. Unbroken, instead, is one of the most perfect films about the power of an unbreakable Faith – especially in oneself – in recent memory.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. Rated M (mature themes, violence and coarse language). 141 minutes. Directed by Justin Chadwick. Screenplay by William Nicholson. Based on Nelson Mandela’s autobiography.

Verdict: A reverential, by-the-numbers biopic from which we learn almost nothing.

Depending on how many details of the subject’s life audiences are familiar with can change everything about the extent to which we engage with biopics on the big screen.

In the case of Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first democratically elected president, Nicholson cherry-picks key points to create an extensive catalogue of great man’s life and achievements. What he and Chadwick fail to do is reveal any insight into their subject’s mind – resulting in a ‘best of’ showreel that lacks any form of deep, critical psychological engagement with what drove the man.

That privilege is reserved for Naomie Harris’s (Skyfall) Winnie Madikizela (later Winnie Mandela). In concert with Idris Elba’s (Pacific Rim, Thor) imposing stride-through the title role, Harris blazes across the screen in a performance that encapsulates the rage against injustice that Winnie Mandela would later pay dearly for. Harris’s performance is blisteringly good, and in context, it’s impossible to believe that Mandela went through life’s ordeals with the same kind peaceful resolve he maintained in later life as one of the world’s great statesmen.

The scenes of his early life as a womanising, young lawyer who finds himself attracted to the revolutionary activities of the African National Congress (of which he would become leader) are biopic-by-the-numbers. Until we witness a very brief scene (sourced from archival footage) of a white woman being violently knocked to the ground in the street by black activists, do Chadwick or Nicholson want us to be overly concerned with all sides of the seriously conflicted points of view.

What we are left with, ultimately, is a long, reverential film that honours Mandela’s memory as much as it does the value of it something of a disservice.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.