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'.

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.

The first review I wrote went into too much detail about the underlying narrative of this movie.

Which I realise now is effectively a spoiler.

So, let me get to the point.

Watch this and get schooled in how the world really works and what some people really think beneath their veneer of respectability.

I won't say anymore but this is an engaging film that says so much about the worth of respect for oneself and your fellow human being.....all under the guise of a documentary about Sherpas (which is does an admirable job with).

It's a film dealing with much more than Sherpas but the global nature of privilege, greed, corruption, money and power.

Watch it.

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.

This film was intended to be a follow up to a situation that had occurred the year prior in Everest, when there was a near riot by the Sherpas directed at climbers, due, we're told, to an increasing feeling among the Sherpa community that their skills and incredibly dangerous work was taken for granted by the climbers, the commercial companies and their government. Poorly paid, poorly insured, regularly dying - and starting to resent this. Sherpas aren't just mountaineers, they're the local people of the area, their wives, their families, their communities, desperately poor and highly reliant on foreign money from the ever increasing number of mountaineers, from which the Nepalese government take a 30% royalty, amounting to $180 million yet provide the communities with so little . This Australian documentary wanted to see what was happening and why the Sherpas might be so angry and "rebelling" after this high altitude fracas. What happened next gave the viewer an answer the film makers will never have expected. Totally tragically 16 Sherpas were killed by an ice fall in the most dangerous part of the climb, the negotiation of the Khumu Ice fall, which the climbers do twice but the Sherpas perhaps twenty times in supplying the camps. The surviving Sherpas became, naturally, very distressed, and following some very emotional meetings, decided to call off the rest of the season, at great person financial cost to themselves and their communities, but preserving their pride and respect for themselves and those that had died. But Russell Bryce's reaction was so incredibly insensitive, patronising certainly, but much worse than patronising, truly lacking humanity and compassion. HIs major concern appeared to be his commercial operation, blaming all the problems on a few young troublemakers who didn't know any better than to misbehave. This was echoed by the other foreigners, the climbers and the commercial operators, one even going to describe the angry Sherpas as "terrorists". Any Westerner, and certainly any New Zealander (Russell is one), with any sense of humanity or humility watching this documentary, the breathtaking scenery, and the literally breathtaking work of the Sherpas, would come away feeling more than a little ashamed of the attitudes that so many of our fellow Western travellers displayed in this film. Yet Russell Bryce has operated his company for twenty years; over that time he must surely have developed some sort of humane rapport with the Sherpas he employs? But it make one wonder, indeed, was that "rapport" just that of master and servant, and has he still not awoken to the fact he has made his money out of a severe imbalance in power, race and culture, that I thought might have been a bit more diluted since the long past days of the Raj, but in which view I would seem to be seriously mistaken.