The Epic of Everest (1924)

What kind of an individual looks at Mount Everest and says, “I will overcome that”? A person of rare drive, I think; a lot of courage and even more ego. And a person of means—lucky in life and in the moment. You’d need all those qualities, so that your fear of the mountain did not lead to intimidation, and then, to a hesitation to climb at all.

You’d need to check your awe, I suppose. Just enough to keep going.

The Epic of Everest is a documentary about that act: that checking of awe. It details a 1924 attempt by a team of Englishmen, aided by Tibetan men and Sherpas, to reach the summit of the world’s tallest peak. As if it were not enough for them to reach the top, the team wished to capture their ascent on camera. And so, through a tremendous mixture of planning and will, endurance and scientific experimentation, they produced the footage that would become this film. I’ve no doubt that Captain John Noel and his companions were told, many times, that it could not be done. But they did it, mostly. And we still have the record today.

The Horse Thief (1986)

I saw The Horse Thief on DVD, two nights ago. “You should see The Horse Thief,” I told my friend, over coffee, one night later. She’ll have the chance: the film is screening at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox this June 29th. And she’ll probably see it for free, because she works there.

But time is money. And so she wanted to know what made it so great—so worth her time—and that I found tricky to explain. For while it would be easy to make a case for the quality of Tian Zhuangzhuang’s direction, or a little tougher, but with research, still possible, to explain the film’s significance within the Chinese cinematic canon, for me these were not the reasons to see it. It was the film’s moodiness that set it apart. I wanted her to be unsettled by it, as I had been. As you would be, I think.