arts in focus
FEATURE
“I think when you’re a filmmaker, you get drawn to certain kinds of things, and I’m drawn to people that are prepared to take risks, and people that live life very passionately.” ain’t pretty at all.’ I mean he would’ve been hurt pretty bad, but he didn’t die. “So too with a scene in Sherpa – we had a lot of shots that we chose not to use … We did use one body and it was silhouetted, and we absolutely were very careful not to show anything close up and not to identify anybody. I talked to my Sherpa translator who was back in Sydney a lot about that; the editors; the producers... The decision was made to use that shot because we have to see the cost. And it makes people feel very uncomfortable – and that’s the intention.”
“I don’t think it’s gratuitous: it’s just fucking real, and it’s what happened.”
Mountain: Madness Bites [FILM] David Molloy chats with director Jennifer Peedom about the landscape she is in thrall to, and the allure of the extreme
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n 2015, no one saw Sherpa coming. It was a documentary that floored viewers with its captivating, gruelling insight into the worst disaster to ever strike Mount Everest, shot through with magnificent landscape cinematography and deep human pathos. While it wasn’t director Jennifer Peedom’s first foray into feature documentaries, it was certainly her defining effort to date, and during
“When I saw that [wingsuit] footage, I thought, ‘I want to fly like a bird like that,’ and I just felt like leaping off a cliff.” 24 :: BRAG :: 724 :: 06:09:17
the making of its successor, the expansive and poetic Mountain, she was deeply conscious of the possibility of pigeonholing. “When people have asked, ‘What are you working on next?’ I say, ‘I’m working on this collaboration with the Australian Chamber Orchestra,’ and they say, ‘Oh, what’s it called?’, and I’m like, ‘Here we go, you’re gonna laugh’,” she says.
“There’s a really huge gap between the people who get those people and the people who do it … Most laypeople look at what they’re doing and say, ‘Well, you’re an idiot; you’re crazy.’ I’ve had enough connection to that world to know they’re not crazy; they’re just wired differently.”
Far from being an effort to recreate Sherpa’s drama, Mountain bears closer resemblance to the sprawling mood-poetry of Koyaanisqatsi – it is, in Peedom’s words, a “love letter to the mountains”. In the quiet of the Sydney studio we meet in, she carries herself with the calm of experience; that magnetic tranquillity possessed by the worldly.
Her subjects, keep in mind, are not people stepping a little out of their comfort zones. We’re talking mountaineers, base jumpers, steep incline skiiers: the kind of folks whose weekends are spent strapping on a wingsuit and attempting to excel in environs mankind was not made to withstand. And Peedom, on an intrinsic level, understands that drive and attempts to distil it in her work in a way that does not reduce the impulse to a stunt reel.
“It’s curious that I’ve been drawn to the mountains,” she says. “I think when you’re a filmmaker, you get drawn to certain kinds of things, and I’m drawn to people that are prepared to take risks, and people that live life very passionately; and often you wind up in extreme environments.
“We talk about the thrill of being in the mountains, in a space where time warps and bends and sensations are thrillingly amplified, and you see these people in these heightened realities and I’ve felt that and experienced that and I kind of wanted to show some of that; what it is to be in these magnificent
environments and just see these climbers’ faces,” she says. “When I saw that [wingsuit] footage, I thought, ‘I want to fly like a bird like that,’ and I just felt like leaping off a cliff.” While Mountain’s focus is much less on human stories than Sherpa, it shares one aspect beyond the obvious – it does not shy away from consequence. One frightening moment in the sequence titled “Madness Bites” shows a skier caught in an avalanche, and the camera holds firm to the figure as they spiral down a mountain. “I find that emotionally you have to push people to make your point,” she says. “To really show how nuts it’s got, and how maybe we’ve gone too far and how these big brands are really pushing us and we’re just kinda egging each other on for the sake of it. You’ve gotta show the implication of that, and if you just show people skiing down these beautiful things and having an amazing time, you’re glorifying it. The point of that shot was to show the opposite of that; to say, ‘This is the potential consequence, and it
The shot in question depicts a body being brought down from the site of the avalanche that killed 16 Sherpas as Peedom and her crew look on. It’s a harrowing moment – one essential to the film’s message. “The shot that makes me feel more uncomfortable is the widow and her face and her baby,” Peedom says, acknowledging the permission given by the family to use the footage. “They knew that that shot would be impactful, and sometimes you’ve gotta go there to have the impact, to have the emotional impact … I don’t think it’s gratuitous: it’s just fucking real, and it’s what happened. “I mean we had to sit there and watch 13 of those guys come down: it was one of the worst days I’ve ever experienced. And I was talking to Renan [Ozturk, Peedom’s stalwart cinematographer] about it and he said the audience needs to see what we’ve saw and feel what we felt.” Mountain’s emotional weight is wildly different – with Richard Tognetti’s moving orchestral score, Robert Macfarlane’s “beautiful, articulate, poetic” language, Willem Dafoe’s cello-like narration and Ozturk’s incomparable eye, the impression is more painterly, serene and profound. Peedom took it on as a challenge, but it has allowed her and her crew to express something deeply personal – a connection to the earth we live on – and communicate it to the world. One shot, devised by Canadian collaborators Sherpa Cinema, defined the effect – a timelapse which shows snowbanks rising and falling like lungs. “To me, that shot is about the earth breathing and being very alive, and we need to take care of it,” she says. “When my little boy saw that shot – and he’s six years old – he said, ‘The earth is breathing, mumma.’” What: Mountain arrives in Australian cinemas on Thursday September 21 thebrag.com