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IMAX 'Everest' ascends cinematic peaks

I recently had a prolonged debate in my modern art precept about Andy Warhol's preoccupation with repetition and size. One student asserted that the multiplication of the image intensifies the emotion of the art. I countered that repetition or, to a greater extent, image enlargement, numbs the senses to shock appeal. But after seeing the IMAX film Everest, I am prepared to recount my statement. Sometimes, bigger is better.

IMAX pictures are filmed with a special camera and presented on a gargantuan screen – the one at Sony Lincoln Square (Broadway and 68th) is eight stories high. This enormity can often be daunting; images are so large that they appear to pop out of the screen. And in Everest, the documentary account of an expedition to the summit of the notorious peak, mountains that appear to be life-size create a veritable mountain range in the theater.

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Everest simultaneously follows the scheme of the typical IMAX movie and diverges from it. True to IMAX's tradition of displaying the untarnished beauty of nature in exotic locales, Everest depicts the wonders of the Himalayas with reverence. But Everest deviates from the norm by injecting a human element into the cinematic experience.

The 45-minute-long journey focuses on the story of three climbers – a veteran Everest traveler, a son driven by his father's historic ascent and the first Spanish woman to reach the summit – and their struggle to conquer the mountain. It also captures a personal story of another expedition, the tragic death of eight climbers in a violent ice storm.

Everest intersperses actual footage from the excursion with short interviews with the climbers. The major themes of the film – reiterated ad nauseum – are the overcoming of adversity through courage and bravery. These are most evident in the expedition's rescue of a stranded climber, complete with a perilous helicopter flight where "the air is so thin that the blades have nothing to grab on to." This is the stuff Hollywood action flicks are made of.

At the end of the film, expedition leader Ed Viesturs decides to complete the last segment of the climb without supplemental oxygen, wanting "more of a challenge." Despite these incessant reminders of the climbers' determination, at this point, the audience wonders if they're just insane.

Because of the difficulty of filming in the IMAX format, Everest is quite an achievement. The camera weighs a whopping 35 pounds and was specially designed in order to withstand low temperatures. Filming in this style is also extremely expensive – a 500-foot roll of film lasts only 90 seconds. Regardless of all this and the film's length, the movie still captures a fairly well-rounded account of this self-defined triumph of the human will.

Visually, the film is breathtaking. The snowcapped mountains that extend miles above cloud level are the main actors in the film, and rightly so. The panoramic cinematography captures their rugged luminescence and sheer grandeur with extreme clarity.

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IMAX's exaggerated format succeeds in making the mountains awe-inspiring. In terms of human drama, however, Everest cops out with its timid and trite portrayal of the climbers and the tragedy. One of the film's most poignant moments depicts a stranded, dying man speaking via radio to his pregnant wife for the last time. The scene seems rushed though, so that the shoreline can continue with the visually stunning and less personal story of the climbers.

Even though the camera documents the climbers' feelings about the tragedy, it seems to gloss this over to reemphasize the anticipation and excitement of the adventurers as they climb to the summit. Although as a documentary, the filmmakers cannot exaggerate the facts, they should have highlighted the more important and exhilarating aspects of the adventure.

The climber's dialogue and narration by Liam Neeson also stifles the drama. The voice-overs recorded after the trek seem overly simplistic and distanced from the excitement of the visuals. At one point toward the beginning of the film, Everest turns into a junior-high science video as cartoon representations of India and Asia collide to demonstrate how the Himalayas were formed. This aspect of IMAX tradition – the quasi-educational nature documentary – takes away from the film's real-life power.

IMAX should not become highbrow or dispense with its tradition of appealing to the masses by visual stimulation, but Everest might have been more successful if the filmmakers applied the notion of exaggeration to the human story. The director, David Breashears, could have used the large-screen format of the IMAX theater to his advantage both visually and emotionally. If IMAX effectively merged its grand depiction of nature with a dramatic, exciting plot, its cinematic potential would be fulfilled. We'd have something more than just a visual spectacle.

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