8/11/2015
Review by David Anthony
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African-American novelist Charles R. Johnson, author of Middle Passage, takes great pains to distinguish between “story” and “plot.” Story may be defined as a narrative housed in a temporal frame, bounded by time, i.e., what historians do. Plot differs. Plot pivots around probing causality. The gripping film Meru succeeds in balancing story via chronology with plot, how things happen. Balance is apt to use in this context as Meru is about climbers and climbing, gravity, the elements, mentorship, trust, life, love and death.

Meru begins with a blank screen broken by the sounds and sights of an eerily forbidding escarpment, honing in on a portaledge within which three climbers are ensconced. They are Jimmy Chin, Conrad Anker and Renan Ozturk. With the music of composer J. Ralph helping set the scene, viewers quickly grasp the awesome force of a majestic, lethal peak.

First to speak is Jenny Lowe-Anker, recalling a wedding vow made by Conrad Anker, her spouse, the alpinist, or mountaineer, that he would not be making any more risky ascents. Remembering this, Jenny gazes into the camera incredulously, sensing the impossibility of that statement. Seconds later Conrad says, “As an alpinist, Meru is the culmination of all I’ve done and all I’ve wanted to do. All I’ve wanted is this peak and this climb.” This captures the essence of Elizabeth Vasarhelyi’s film Meru, chronicling the quest to scale Meru Peak, a 21,000 foot mountain in the Gharwal Himalayas, in Uttarakhand, India.

The entry way to this prize of prizes on Mount Meru is the central Shark’s Fin route, soaring above the river Ganges. Meru follows the efforts of three elite climbers, Anker, Chin and Ozturk to reach the summit of this central peak, reputedly the hardest. Meru draws on unforgettable footage filmed by Chin and Ozturk, stitched together by Vasarhelyi, whose previous works included Touba and Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love, on Sufis and Sufism or Islamic mysticism in Senegal, West Africa and postwar Kosovars in A Normal Life. Since 2013 Vasarhelyi has been married to Jimmy Chin.

Meru takes us through how Chin, Anker and Ozturk became entranced by Meru, and how this rapture affected all those around them. It is about ambition, ego, courage, risk, family and something not easily stated in words, a clearly spiritual compulsion. It is no accident that their goal is located within a holy land, vividly described by writer Jon Krakauer as “This weird nexus, the sort of point where heaven and earth and hell all come together.”

Meru is not merely a paean to thrill-seeking daredevils. It is more a meditation on the purpose of life. Whether or not one would ever climb, it has much to teach its audiences.

This is David H. Anthony