Sherpa

Composite Score: 85.43

Featuring: Russell Brice, Tim Medvetz, Pasang Tenzing Sherpa, and Phurba Tashi Sherpa

Director: Jennifer Peedom

Writer: Jennifer Peedom

Genres: Documentary, Thriller

MPAA Rating: Not Rated

Box Office: $1.16 million worldwide

Why should you Watch This Film?

                Sherpa is Jennifer Peedom’s documentary about the Sherpas who help foreign climbers make it to the summit of Mt. Everest each year. The film originally was mean to explore a disagreement between the Sherpas and climbers that had occurred in 2013, stemming from the use of a slur by one of the climbers, but it morphed into an examination of the working conditions for Sherpas on Everest and the injustice of the system as it existed – the change resulting from the deadliest avalanche in recent history on Everest that killed sixteen Sherpas. The documentary garnered critical acclaim for delving into the problematic practices of the climbing organizers and the system that has necessitated such danger with minimal compensation for the Sherpas.

Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?

                The morality of Sherpa leaves the audience with a sense that even the perpetrators of the exploitation of the Sherpas might not be that bad of guys. Specifically, the film highlights the way that Russell Brice, a climb organizer, lies to his clients about the intensity of the resistance he’s receiving from his Sherpa employees when he asks about returning to the climb, implying that he really doesn’t want to make them return because he feels for the loss that they are experiencing. At the same time, he still has been totally fine with this practice for the fifteen to twenty years that he’s been in the business up to that point, but the film wants us to try and forgive that because he feels bad now that people have actually died – that monetary exploitation is fine so long as the person committing it feels bad when people die. I’ll just leave it at stating that his arc in the film rubbed me the wrong way, and I definitely didn’t love it.

So wait, why should you Watch This Film?

                What makes Sherpa stand out as a documentary is its near flawless execution of its unintentional pivot. Clearly, as an audience, you go in knowing a bit about what the film has going on, but the filmmakers thought they were making a pretty intensely different film when they set out and still came away with a finished product that tells an engaging story with an important message that not many others are telling. Some documentaries are great because of the iconography of the people they cover or the beauty of the shooting or the ways that they shed light on some niche topic and challenge their viewers to action. While Sherpa does celebrate some unsung heroes and offers some rarely ever seen shots of Everest and the process of climbing it and illuminates the lives of the Sherpas at its core and leaves the audience questioning the morality of continuing the commercialization of climbing the mountain, those things on their own would probably leave this as just another run-of-the-mill outdoors documentary. The ways that Peedom draws connections between her initial footage before the avalanche and the drama of the aftermath makes for a truly impressive show of innovative filmmaking and storytelling.

                You hate to say that Sherpa benefitted from an act of nature when that act of nature left sixteen people dead, but that act also provided the film with a much-needed catalyst to present the horrors of the reality that it wants to show the audience, ultimately earning it a spot among the greats. While its treatment of some of the more complicit parties might not be as damning as it could be, the film’s overall message comes through clearly to the audience and leaves them with a challenging thought about the morality of climbing Everest. You can currently rent this documentary on Apple TV or on Amazon Prime if you’d like to check it out.