Sherpa

Attending the Sydney Film Festival, I had been waiting all Festival for that piece of cinematic magic that just leaves you breathless and desperate to run out of the theatre so that you can share it with everyone you know. I found that with director Jennifer Peedom's impassioned documentary Sherpa.

Initially envisioned as an exploration of the deteriorating relationship between Sherpas and foreign climbers from the Sherpas perspective - particularly after the highly publicised 2013 Base Camp 1 brawl between European climbers and Sherpas - Sherpa quickly becomes a real-time chronicle of the worst loss of human life on Mt Everest in a single day.

Beginning with a series of majestic perspectives and time-lapse shots of the mother mountain, high-altitude cinematographers Renan Ozturk, Hugh Miller and Ken Saul – globally renown mountaineers in their own right – manage to capture the formidable, yet poetic beauty of Everest's peak as jet stream winds billow across it's dangerous edges. It's a wondrous sight, juxtaposed by crunching crampons and ice shifts that remind you of Everest's dangerously fragile environment.

So too does Peedom's thoughtful and oft times, entertaining introduction to Himalayan Experience's Sirdar Phurba Tashi Sherpa and his family. The current world record holder for the most total ascents of peaks above 8,000, and joint record holder for the most ascents (21) of Mt Everest, Phurba and his family are all too aware of Everest's rising exigency both on and off the peak. 'My brother died on Everest last year' Phurba's wife Karma Dopa Sherpa shares as she fights back tears on screen 'he went because he needed the money'.

Phurba understands his wife's concerns and knows culturally that it is wrong to climb the mountain they call Chomolungma but he also enjoys what he does. The income generated by the most dangerous job in the word not only financially benefits Sherpas families but it also benefits their entire community for the whole year. Humorously, Phurba's mother fails to agree with her son stating 'if he was a famous Monk, at least he would get blessings. But the fame he gets from the mountain is useless'.

Writer and journalist Ed Douglas shares this opinion as he presents throughout the film, a clear picture of the growing divide between the Sherpas cultural integrity and intrusive western commercialisation that one can't help but be appalled by. So too is the disproportionate contributions and risks Sherpas shoulder compared to their clients. Whilst wealthy westerners pay up to $75,000 to conquer their ultimate bucket list challenge, Sherpas earn a meager $5,000 to risk their lives up to 30 times per season for their clients, are rarely acknowledged or thanked publicly for their contribution to the climbers ascent, nor often respected for their cultural beliefs.

Early in the film, as Sherpas set up Everest base camp from scratch in anticipation of their western clients, Peedom gives audiences subtle glimpses of outrageous and shameful western excess and expectation: flat screen TV's, portable showers, bar areas, and an equipped library. There's a scene following the tent village preparations where two Sherpas are offering coffee to clients as they cheerily wish them good morning at their tent. After serving the first client who returns the Sherpas greetings and thanks them for the coffee, the following client responds by asking for sugar and no milk as if they are at their local Costa rather than over 5,000 m above sea level. It's truly a head shaking moment.

So too is the client meeting held between Himalayan veteran Russell Brice of Himalayan Experience and his commercial expedition group following the avalanche. As one of the last expedition groups to cancel their summit bids, not all of Brice's clients were happy. One American climber suggests Brice seek out 'the owner' of the unruly Sherpas and have them removed from the camp and later compares the cancellation of the season due to the Sherpas respect for their lost friends, their families and the mountain to a terrorist attack like 9/11 since America knows all about that. Boy did that incredulous statement make the audience laugh!

At certain points in the film, it's hard to find sympathy for the expedition operators and climbers bemoaning the loss of their ascent attempt and revenue as Sherpas mourn the 16 Sherpas who died but Peedom manages to find a respectful balance between the parties during and following the tragedy on screen. You can feel the raw emotions of expedition operators and their crews, medical staff, Sherpas and concerned climbers as they traverse from casualty and body recovery to confusion and frustration following the tragedy and finally, the Sherpas evaluation of their role on Everest and the increasing dangers on the mountain due to climate change.

Whilst Sherpa documents a horrific tragedy in real-time, it also acts as the dramatic backdrop for industrial dispute that's been simmering under the surface sky for a long time. Douglas concurs 'Tenzing gave the name Sherpa a currency that will never be exhausted and they are now finally beginning to take advantage of that'.

I couldn't agree more.

Sherpa is an extraordinary and soulful documentary, where there's death in beauty and beauty in death. As Tenzing Norgay says 'you don't conquer these mountains, you know; you just crawl up, as a child crawling onto your mothers lap'.

I went in expecting a 'spectacle documentary' but Sherpa turned out to be so much more.

As with so so many great documentaries, the film-makers went in expecting to make one type of film and came out with something much more than they could surely have hoped.

The spectacle of the cinematography should be enough to draw an audience; if that fails the human story is powerful - moments of heavy emotion and a heart-rending look in a wife's eyes still rattle about in my head.

Many other themes are strewn throughout also, giving the film a pleasing depth - politics, racial divides and differences, economic realities of mountain life and exploitation of nature amongst them.

One of the greatest triumphs for me is that we go on our own expedition with the subjects but also with the film-makers: As their plans become derailed and their film goes in a direction they could not have expected we join them - We find ourselves embroiled in real- life drama and tragedy in perhaps the most dramatic of all locations on Earth.

A great documentary but shows the west in a bad light - idiotic Americans saying some of the Sherpas are terrorists because they don't want to go up the mountain and die for peanuts. It followed a tragic day when 16 Sherpas died in an icefall.

The expedition leader Russell Brice comes across terribly, implying that a handful of Sherpas threatened to attack other Sherpas if they carried on climbing, when this simply didn't seem to be true!

Hopefully things will change for Sherpas and the west will stop plundering these people and pay them what they deserve.

Wow I am ashamed to be a New Zealander after watching this. All he cared about was the almighty dollar. Great documentary.

As for the guy who asked who "owned" these men. Could not believe my ears. Disgusting.

Mount Everest brings to mind many things. High altitudes, freezing temperatures and an increasing number of foreigners climbing the peak, at one point resulting in a traffic jam of epic proportions. It has become a business, with the Sherpa people always in the background; rarely expressing any emotion, helping out willingly as it is often the only way that these people can earn themselves a living – risking their lives time and time again to help complete strangers.

This film is told almost entirely from the perspective of the Sherpa. As we watch we see the insane risks that these people put themselves through, we also learn about the Sherpa as a native people. Deeply religious, they pray constantly that their journey will be successful and without death.

Their prayers are of course no guarantee, and in 2013 an almost inconceivable incident happened at 21,000 feet: a fight broke out between the Sherpa and the climbers they had been helping. They felt disrespected by a western climber who had referred to one of them as a mother f***er, which is pretty much the worst thing you could say to one of these people.

The small bits of footage captured from this incident show the usually calm and reserved Sherpa visibly angry. Tempers flared, rocks were thrown, as the Sherpa people finally let their voices be heard, knowing that foreign climbers see them almost as tools to help them achieve their goal, and don't respect them and their work as a result.

That fight was the inspiration behind this Australian-made documentary as the filmmakers decided that to find out what had caused this tension, they should follow the Sherpa, interviewing them and their families, who often have a good sense of humour about a very dangerous job that their loved one is involved in. Also interviewed and extensively on camera is Russell Brice, who is one of many crew-leaders ready to lead his team to the summit. While he continues to fight for safer conditions on the mountain to this day, during the film he comes off as a bit of an insensitive douche; disrespecting the Sherpa and spreading rumours about them, while remaining blissfully ignorant of their hard work. His lack of respect is alarming given how much the Sherpa contribute to every climb.

This latter sentiment is unfortunate, given the work these people do. One of their tasks is to transport all that is needed – for the foreign climbers – up the mountain to each base camp.

The most brutal part of the Sherpa's journey is that of the ice wall, literally a strip of ice that can move at any second. It must be traversed at night where there is a smaller chance of the ice shifting. Giant blocks of ice threaten their journey, yet the Sherpa continue without fear. Somehow this bravery is largely ignored by many foreign climbers who see the mountain as a tourist hot-spot; the more people climbing, the better for business. We even see flat-screen televisions at base camp. The rise of interest in the mountain is also raising the risk exponentially as the Sherpa are forced to climb the mountain several times a year, some up to thirty times.

This film is the anti-Everest. Looking even more stunning than that film, Sherpa charts the journey of the native Nepalese Phurba Tashin in the 2014 climbing season. What follows is a tragedy that leads to the Sherpa as a group making a list of demands, the meat of which involved compensation for unfortunate families left behind, as well as a rise in payment. For years the Sherpa have been silent, but here they become very vocal, accusing the government of taking their money; which is true in a sense, as they are paid pennies compared to what the business of climbing earns, parts of which go to the government. Their arguments were fair, but the reactions from some of the foreign climbers involved was disgusting to say the least, and shows just how little respect some of these foreign climbers have for the Sherpa despite the incredible work that they do, all of it so they can feed their family, and all of it to help the foreigners.

One American man actually referred to them as terrorists, simply because they were chanting for a rise in pay (in another language), while the circumstances meant that he couldn't climb the mountain when he felt like it. As the protests continue, he actually asks his team leader if they can call the 'owners' of the Sherpa to sort out the situation. The packed IMAX cinema all chuckled in unison at his senseless, egregiously ignorant remarks.

One of the best films to come out of Australia, if not our best documentary ever, SHERPA is an intoxicating, showing real peril and tragedy from the mountain itself. Using a combination of draw dropping visuals, head-cam footage from the Sherpa climbers themselves, brief interjections of archival footage and talking heads from both the Sherpa and the foreign climbers, this flick paints the definitive film of Mount Everest, or as the locals call it, Chomolungma.

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