Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur is not one for shortcuts. As soon as he decided to make Everest, he knew he'd take on the mountain itself. Everest is a mammoth, thrilling, IMAX-sized dramatisation of the 1996 blizzard tragedy that killed eight climbers, and Kormákur wanted not only to honour the dead with authenticity, but for audiences to get as virtual an experience as possible. So up he went.
After personally summiting up to 24,000ft to scout for locations, in January 2014 he took cast and crew (including Jake Gyllenhaal and Josh Brolin) to Everest base camp, filming at around 15,000ft in the harshest of conditions (the production's second unit, meanwhile, went even further, shooting almost at the peak). After Nepal they moved to Italy to film in the Dolomites which, at 10,000ft and -30°c, was no less forgiving.
Kormákur lives for such adventure. He’s been making films for 15 years, and previously came to Hollywood for the Mark Wahlberg/Denzel Washington action comedy 2 Guns, but the former competitive sailor still lives in a north Icelandic town of 200 people, and tests himself against the elements whenever he gets half a chance. WIRED called him in Iceland to talk about enduring Everest.
**WIRED: Was Everest, or mountaineering, something that you were always interested in?**Kormákur: Yeah, absolutely – I'm kind of wild for the dangers of nature. That's always been a part of me. I used to sail a lot in all kinds of weather, competing on small sailboats in the ocean. And I travel a lot in Iceland on horses every summer, through the wild areas where there's no inhabitants and there are volcanoes. A little bit like cowboys, you run free with the horses and you keep them in a herd, and you stop at places where they can eat or get some grass, and you go like that for two weeks. It's my favourite thing to do. All that – adventure, danger, nature – it's a big part of me. But I wasn't a skilled mountain-climber.
**On a location-scout in Nepal for the film, your helicopter didn't turn up and you were stranded on the mountain for hours. What happened?**We only had one helicopter to ferry people up, so they left me and the DP [director of photography] with a bottle of oxygen, and unfortunately there was no oxygen in the bottle. They'd made a mistake. We had been struggling to breathe. When you travel up too fast, it's like when divers come up too fast, they can get bubbles in the blood. The same thing happens when you travel too high too fast, you can get really sick quickly. You have to acclimatise, and we hadn't – we were just dropped there. So we had to wait there for the helicopter and we were getting pretty dizzy. If you stay up there too long because your brain swells, it gets smaller then pushes out again, and at some point you get water or blood in your lungs, and that can be very dangerous. But they picked us up, we were alright.
A character in the film says that**“human beings simply aren't built to function at the cruising altitude of a 747. Our bodies will be literally dying.” What's the reality of information like that when you're actually up there?**It’s pretty much how we described it. A lot of the lines in the script actually come from radio talks the real people had on the mountain. If you look out a jet window when it's flying, it's roughly the same height. When you're going from camp 4 to the top and back down, your body is dying. It's a slow death. The body just starts falling apart. If you're up there more than 12 hours, you're not going to make it down. If you have a small rock in your shoe it's going to be incredible painful. Everything gets exaggerated.
**How did the actors cope up there on Everest?**When we started shooting in Kathmandu we travelled up with donkeys and yaks. The actors couldn't have their assistants with them, we had to sleep under electric blankets because the lodges were not heated. It was in January, at the roots of Everest. So you had A-list actors walking with all this equipment and hardly being able to breathe. All that made it an experience that I think the actors will remember, and value. They did something that they can't do in a studio in LA.
**Was there any studio or insurance resistance to some of the things you wanted to do?**I probably would have shot with the actors on the top of Everest if they would have allowed me. But then I wouldn't be on this phone call.
**Jake Gyllenhaal said you really pushed the actors, to have them really feel the elements. How much were they prepared for what you were asking of them?**Those who had the longest run of it trained in mountain climbing. Most of them went through some training, and we trained everybody for two or three days when they came to set, to the mountain. We were doing a tough scene with Jake and he was basically frozen to the bone. It's all real. I pushed him until he couldn't take it any more. The hair inside his nose was icy – it's not make-up. We were up 4,000 feet and it was -30c and we kept on doing the scene again until I'd got it.
**That part was in Italy – how did shooting there compare to Everest?**We shot them going up a mountain in the Dolomites, in real snow, in February. There were avalanche warnings. It was -30c, up 4,000m. Nepal was the first thing we did, and people thought, 'Okay, we've got the hardest part done,' then we flew to Italy, and the first day of shooting, 7 o'clock in the morning it's -30c on the mountain, and I could see their faces: 'Fuck, this is my next six weeks? I can't do it.' You take it hour by hour. Like an alcoholic, one day at a time. People just lose their spirit. 'I can't do it, this is too cold, it's too high, it's too hard. I didn't sign up for this.’ But then they get through it and see that actually they can do it, they get really happy with themselves.
**How did you cope?**Sometimes at 7 o'clock in the morning in the elevator that brought us up the Dolomites and it's -30 I’d think, 'Oh you idiot, how do you get yourself into these situations.' But fortunately I come from one of the coldest countries in the world, and I spend a lot of time in nature, I swim in the North Atlantic ocean. And I'm a bit of a show-off to be honest. So I did enjoy it.
**You also shot in a studio in Pinewood. How did you recreate the mountain?**We shot some stuff in Pinewood because we just didn’t always have the right environment [on the mountains]. We built a huge see-through box, almost the size of a big house, then we cooled the air inside it down below zero, and we imported real snow from Holland to blow into actors' faces. You could make it easier and use potato chips to blow at people; some people wondered why I was pushing it this far, but in the end I hope people will realise what it gives you. The visual experience. And I did it in 3D because I wanted people to feel like they had almost travelled the mountain. It's not an easy watch. I want people to feel the beauty of it, and what it really is, as much as possible. That's why I pushed actors. Not because of my masculinity or being difficult, I just really wanted them, and the audience, to feel it.
**What are your thoughts now on people doing this, climbing Everest? In April last year 16 Sherpas died during the avalanche there, and of course the Nepal earthquake caused 18 Everest deaths.**Well it's kind of a cautionary tale, this film. It's about the beginning of the commercialisation of Everest. It's a story about how things can go – nature is not a theme park. We had this back here [in Iceland] with the volcano explosions, we have Russians flying in on helicopters to do selfies, people don't realise they're getting way too close. But I'm not a preacher, I think people should do whatever they want to do. Climb a mountain, go into space. As long as they don't hurt anyone else. I actually think a life is sometimes better spent doing that than being buried in a basement somewhere with a computer all your life and not taking any risks, not really living life. That's my opinion. I'm not saying you can't enjoy having a life in a basement, but I would rather do that than not. But it comes with a cost.
**Did filming on Everest teach you anything you didn't know about the mountain?**The first time I was there on the mountain, I teared up. Just at the volume of the place. The size of it. It wasn't surprising how dangerous the mountain is, but fantasising about something is different to experiencing it. And I got the experience of a lifetime, and I'm very grateful for it.
Everestis out on September 18.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
