Review: 'Everest: The Other Side' beautifully shows us the work behind climbing Mt. Everest, but leaves open the question of "why?"

I don’t know if mortals are supposed to understand why there are some people who pursue extreme physical challenges. The closest we have to understanding such people is the husband-and-wife documentary team of Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, and even for them the figures chronicled in “Everest: The Other Side” are on the edge.

The couple won an Oscar for their documentary portrait of rock climber Alex Honnold in “Free Solo,” and that familiarity with the climbing world comes into play with this look at Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson, who shared a dream to ascend Mount Everest the hard way — up the steep, snow-covered north face of the world’s highest mountain.

Morrison tells us that some 13,000 people have climbed to the summit of Mount Everest in history, almost all of them from the classic southern route from Nepal. Only five people, we’re told, have done it from the other side — mostly because of the steep terrain,  but also because the Chinese government owns the north face, and gives out permits sparingly.

Morrison and Nelson met while on Everest, and as partners raised Nelson’s two boys and went out on climbing expeditions. They shared a dream to climb the north face and ski down it, something no one has ever done. (There was a 1975 documentary, “The Man Who Skied Down Everest,” about Japanese climber and skier Yuichiro Miura, who went down the south face on skis in 1970. He just turned 94.)

The new movie shows Morrison and Nelson training for that climb when in 2022 Nelson was caught in an avalanche and killed on Manaslu, the world’s eighth-highest mountain, in the Himalayas. After a grieving period, Morrison decides he’s going to complete the climb he wanted to do with Nelson — and he asks Chin to be his climbing partner. 

Before Chin says yes, the movie gives us perhaps the most real moment ever: A conversation between Chin and Vasarhelyi, where she asks her husband how many of their friends are now dead. 

Still, Chin joins Morrison on this climb, and that’s what the rest of the movie shows.

The filmmakers take pains to show the thousand little details that go into an Everest climb, any one of which could go wrong on an expedition team. The two most important things, the movie shows us, are a good team of Nepalese guides who set up the ropes and camps that get people up the mountain, and the spotters who radio in details of the land they’re hitting next — and the weather that’s also on its way.

And with a crew like this, there’s a third group: The ones filming it all, and capturing spectacular views of the climb. Chin and Vasarhelyi have an uncanny talent for finding or creating those moments, and to not get int he way too much when putting them together.

“Everest: The Other Side” never satisfactorily answers the question of why these climbers do it — when asked, they either hem and haw or fall back on Sir Edmund Hillary’s famous “because it’s there.” But if the movie can’t uncover the why, it excels at depicting the how, and that may be enough.

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‘Everest: The Other Side’

★★★

Opens Friday, October 30, in theaters. Rated PG-13 for thematic material and brief strong language. Running time: 110 minutes; in English and Sharpa with subtitles.