\n\tIn the past decade, the mountain-climbing documentary has become a genre unto itself. Spectacular movies like \u201cFree Solo,\u201d \u201cThe Dawn Wall,\u201d and the 2024 Sundance knockout \u201cSkywalkers: A Love Story\u201d (about rooftoppers who scale the world\u2019s tallest spindly skyscrapers, a feat so dangerous that they could be climbing earthly peaks) are like the world\u2019s dizziest action films. They exert an appeal that might be summed up by the line: Come for the heart-in-the-throat vertigo, stay for the human drama\u2026but also stay to explore the question, \u201cWhat sort of a person pursues this much vertigo?\u201d These movies have a don\u2019t-look-down appeal that\u2019s at once awesome and terrifying.<\/p>\n
\n\tSo naturally, I expected more of the same from \u201cThe Last First: Winter K2<\/a>,\u201d the mountain-climbing documentary that opened the Sundance Film Festival<\/a> today. It\u2019s about an expedition \u2014 or, really, several expeditions at once \u2014 to climb K2, the second-highest peak in the world (after Mount Everest). Just hearing how dangerous and forbidding K2 is can give you a chill (and the cold is part of it \u2014 even at base camp, the temperatures can reach 50 below). It\u2019s known as the Savage Mountain, because George Bell, a climber in 1953, said, \u201cIt\u2019s a savage mountain that tries to kill you.\u201d More people have died trying to climb K2 (nearly 100 in total) than any other mountain. At 8,611 meters, it\u2019s 238 meters shorter than Everest, but it presents a far more treacherous and difficult climb. Even the mountain\u2019s location is forbidding. As described by Wikipedia, K2 \u201clies in the Karakoram range, partially in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan-administered Kashmir and partially in the China-administered Trans-Karakoram Trace in the Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County or Xinjiang.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tDon\u2019t climb this at home.<\/p>\n \n\tK2 has been scaled many times (the first ascent to the summit was by an Italian expedition in 1954), but \u201cThe Last First,\u201d set in 2020 and 2021, chronicles the first successful attempt to ascend to the top of K2 in winter. There are 14 mountains on earth higher than 6,000 meters, and as the film opens 13 of them have been climbed in winter. But the staggering difficulty of K2 in winter, with its icy vertical facades and frigid snowstorms and winds that can send large rocks hurtling, almost makes it a different mountain than it is at any other time. The title of \u201cThe Last First\u201d means: This was the last true mountaineering challenge that existed on earth. That\u2019s why so many wanted to try it \u2014\u00a0because it was there.<\/p>\n \n\tThe director, Amir Bar-Lev (\u201cLong Strange Trip,\u201d \u201cThe Tillman Story\u201d), fastens onto a charismatic climber from Iceland, John Snorri Sigurj\u00f3nsson, who is genial and strapping, with a loving spouse and six kids. His wife, Lina, talks about how he\u2019s addicted to doing this, and when he arrives at the base of K2, where he has arranged to make the climb with a fabled Pakistani mountaineer, Ali Sadpara, and his son, Sajid Sadpara, we\u2019re primed for another jaw-dropping mountain doc \u2014 a close-up look at humanity vs. the elements.<\/p>\n \n\tBut something has changed. There is now, in the world, a profusion of climbers (we see footage of an endless stretching line of them hiking up Everest), and that becomes part of the story that \u201cThe Last First\u201d is telling: the democratization of mountain climbing, which has its commercial side (one of the groups making the K2 climb has signed up with an outfit called Seven Summit Treks) and most definitely its social-media side (many of the climbers have come with their own camera person). Before long, the situation on K2 becomes quite competitive, especially when Nirmal \u201cNims\u201d Purja shows up. He\u2019s a mountaineer from Nepal who\u2019s the closest thing this sport has to a Himalayan superstar. In 2019, Purja climbed all 14 of the world\u2019s 8,000-meter peaks in six months (at the time, a record). He arrives with a team of Sherpas, and his ambition to be the first climber to conquer K2 in winter is presented as proudly nationalistic. He\u2019s doing it for the glory of Nepal.<\/p>\n \n\tThat seems as good a reason as any to scale an epic peak. Bar-Lev interviews Nims, who we can see is an obsessive rock star of mountaineering; it\u2019s clear that he\u2019ll be one of the film\u2019s key competing players. The teams are all wary of one another, because each wants to be first, and the film mostly stays tethered to John Snorri\u2019s point-of-view. But then we learn that Nims and his team, in the middle of the night, have actually made the trek to the summit. They have conquered K2 in winter. The feat that the movie is built around is accomplished before we know it.<\/p>\n \n\tThat doesn\u2019t stop the other teams from also trying to reach the top. And the fact that the movie it about a lot more than simply being first isn\u2019t, in itself, a problem. Yet there\u2019s something odd, and frankly a little patronizing, about how \u201cThe Last First\u201d takes the triumph of the Nepalese team and just sort of throws it away, treating is almost as an afterthought. There are rumors that something scurrilous went on \u2014 that Nims cut the ropes he\u2019d used, so that no one could follow him. But those rumors turn out to be false. The Nepalese climbers did nothing wrong; they proved themselves to be extraordinary. So why is \u201cThe Last First\u201d so uninterested in them?<\/p>\n \n\tThere was no camera around to record Nims and his team as they were ascending. And, in fact, one of the distinguishing features of \u201cThe Last First\u201d is that for all the breathtaking footage shot on K2 (the craggy rock faces, the avalanches, the clouds, the lunar grandeur of it all), the film isn\u2019t photographed to give us the kind of vicarious you-are-there climbing rush that \u201cFree Solo,\u201d \u201cThe Dawn Wall,\u201d and \u201cSkywalkers\u201d did. As a result, I suspect it will prove a far less commercial movie.<\/p>\n \n\tInstead of turning his film into a hovering-on-the-slopes thrill ride, Bar-Lev focuses on how the K2 winter climb becomes a chain of mishaps and disasters. One of the most experienced of all the climbers, a Spaniard named Sergi Mingote, falls to his death. This is a wake-up call, or should have been. But rather than heeding the danger, the climbers who remain begin instead to get in each other\u2019s way. The mountain is scaled in sections, one camp at a time, and at one of the camps there aren\u2019t enough tents for sleeping. The climbers have to crowd into the tents that are there, which means that no one gets a proper rest, and that results, down the line, in more tragedy.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe Last First\u201d is not another climb-every-mountain doc of daredevil glory. Here the glory is threaded with human folly. During the 2020-2021 attempt to climb K2, a total of five climbers died. \u201cThe Last First\u201d is a revealing look at how they risked their lives for an ideal, maybe for an addiction. It\u2019s a movie that shows us the dark side of literally getting high. That\u2019s engrossing, to a point, but it\u2019s not exhilarating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the past decade, the mountain-climbing documentary has become a genre unto itself. 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