The Summit (2013)

If You did not know about these climbers before You would think that this was a fictionary. The scenes are so realistic that it took a good while to understand that it not was the real people but actors. I was both fascinated and sometimes annoyed over the behaviour of the climbers. But this was a movie that really got to You.Now we have learned that one of the climbers, the swede Fredrik Sträng will climb the K2 again! Thanks to this movie I will watch every steps he will take ans as i did watching this movie--Why?

This is a fascinating story and a filmmaker's dream. But the filmmakers managed to make the story very confusing. The interviews are often hard to understand because of the different accent the people have. Then, it is mixed and edited in confusing sequence. Critical questions are not asked, it is a discovery-style movie but so poorly scripted that at the end one still question himself...so what did actually happen? The footage and scenery delivers spectacular views, but unfortunately the film does not transfer the drama which has taken place that day. Let someone take the material, re-shuffle it into a proper order and add a voice-over who can put some context, structure and critical notes in.

This is a story about tragedy caused by complete and utter confusion. From simple mistakes at the beginning of the attempt everything turned into chaos that cost many lives.So, given that confusion in the subject matter, it would be difficult to remove confusion from the documentary. Sadly, the creators seem to have actually gone out of their way to introduce more confusion. Out of sequence histories, introducing another (related) story, and not attempting to tie everything together.I'm glad that I watched this movie, I just would have liked it to be better put together.

"He discovers things about his own body and mind that he had almost forgotten in the day-to-day, year-to-year routine of living." James Ramsey Ullman, High Conquest.I don't know about you, but if I were approaching the "death zone" while mountain climbing, I'd turn back. However, you can bet the heroes of the documentary, The Summit, hiking the world's second biggest and most difficult mountain (it defeats 1 out of every 4 climbers), K2, had no such thoughts. The Summit won the Sundance World Cinema documentary award this year.More interesting than the physical exploits is the rationale for doing such a dangerous sport in the first place. Yet, such psychoanalyzing is not a matter for The Summit, a thrilling doc long on the difficult climb and more difficult decisions while fates are decided in sometimes inscrutable and random ways. It's short on the motivation, which pretty much is accepted these days as, "because it's there." Eleven climbers of 25 lost their lives that day in 2008 without an adequate explanation for any of the deaths. However this thesis is proved once more: Most lives in climbing are lost on the descent. The film has a fragmented, multiple-points-of-view (think of a climbing Rashomon) approach that cuts among the several players and history while featuring a couple of the more charismatic climbers, especially Ger McDonnell, whose death is the most difficult to understand even as he's touted for his alleged attempt to save 3 Korean climbers. This discursive storytelling can be confusing while it saps the thrust of the inherently intriguing story. The many re-enactments drain the film of its immediate "what-the" doc impact. The film retains some of the awe we all feel when in the presence of such a manifestation of Nature's power: "You do not laugh when you look at the mountains, or when you look at the sea." Lafcadio Hearn