Sherpa

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.

Everyone knows that documentaries tell the truth. Well, at least somebody's version of the truth. On the one hand there are participative documentaries like Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) starring its interventionist director Michael Moore, and on the other hand there are observational documentaries like Sherpa (2015) where the camera is the chief story-teller. Unlike movies, the doco aims for a higher social purpose and in Sherpa it is to show the world how the real glory of climbing Mount Everest belongs an exploited ethnic group in the mountains of Nepal. As historical gatekeepers for the Himalayas, their existence has depended on risking their lives so that Westerners and others can experience what it feels like "to conquer Everest".

Australian filmmaker Jennifer Peedom starts out asking why the traditionally friendly Sherpa guides turned aggressive towards tourists in the 2013 climbing season. The widely reported brawl was triggered by a single swear word directed at a Sherpa, igniting tensions that were simmering since Hillary was Knighted for his 1953 ascent while Sherpa Tenzing received lesser credit. In the middle of filming the brawl story, a massive avalanche claimed 16 Sherpa lives. Suddenly it is about the politics of an ethnic group demanding respect, no longer prepared to risk lives for meagre wages from an industry hosting thousands of tourists each year and charging summit climbers $75,000 – $100,000 for the privilege. The camera becomes a witness to tragedy, then grief that turns to anger and political activism. Audiences become judge in a case involving ethnic discrimination and the commercial exploitation of people who have been used as cheap mules. It's a complex dilemma with no easy solutions because the same commercial interests have done much to improve the lives of Sherpas.

The film shows political sensitivity in telling the story from the Sherpa viewpoint. Its great strengths lie in extraordinary cinematography and sound recording under the most chaotic high-altitude conditions a filmmaker can ever experience. The camera works skilfully across the visual pleasures of vast mountain-scapes to angry grief stricken Sherpa faces and frustrated tourist climbers, with a soundtrack of howling wind, crunching ice and hammering stakes that viscerally creates a 'being there' feel. Peedom lets the story tell itself without manipulative editing, and it is highly engaging while being informative about a world that few of us will enter. It is beautifully filmed and teaches much about Sherpa life and their struggle for recognition.

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.

Hard to say - what was left on the editing floor but, it appeared to be from the Sherpa's perspective. One theme which rang through to me was the old 19th Century Master/Slave, Explorer/guide, Great White Warrior theme. And yes, during one of the down time cooling off talks one of the climbers did ask who "owned" the Sherpa who was making the trouble. I have never been over there but to me it seemed to be the Sherpa/Climber relationship has grown from the original 1953 Hillary climb where the climber's held the upper hand and the Sherpa's were subordinate - this film documents the reconsideration of that previous relationship. So it is a worthwhile documentary which I think all interested in climbing will enjoy. Now, personally for me, it's another crack in the wall of white supremacy, imperialism, whatever you want to call it. The hubris of these climbers who "brave Everest" when everything is prepared, lugged, cooked, constructed, behind the scenes by Sherpas is sickening. Their indignity at the Sherpas who dare have an opinion is amazing. Their insensitivity to local loss of life is embarrassing. Using the white supremacy term is serious so let me explain further. There is a movement in Congree to make the Buffalo our National Mammal. Ludicrous. We Europeans wiped out the Buffalo - some for sport some for tongues, and most tragically because we wanted to starve/force the Indians to the reservations so we could steal their land. One of the most noble civilizations ever along with the Buddhists and we wiped them out because we had our Manifest Destiny. What we are/were looking for could be found in the Indian way of life we destroyed. Ditto for chapter 2: the black man. We rape and slave them right out of Africa and act like it's their fault when they are "freed" and try to adapt to be 2nd class citizens. So we put a black on our money and make the Buffalo our national mammal - all fixed? Sorry for the rant but we treat the Sherpas with the same European contempt.

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.