As I watched Everest, I couldn’t shake the feeling
that I had previously watched a documentary about the tragic events depicted in
the film. The particular elements and difficulties leading to fatalities all
felt familiar, but I think that has more to do with the similarity between
separate events, like the ones also depicted in The Summit. This was the film I was thinking of, and though it took
place in a different decade and on a different mountain, there are a remarkable
number of things that remain the same. This seems to show that no amount of
time diminishes the height of some peaks, but it also provides some narrative
difficulty.