I
have developed an unfortunate phobia around my viewing of the first film
of the new year. I give it some undue portent as if it’s going to set
the tone for everything I see over the following twelve months.
“Begin as you mean to go on,” as such. Sadly, from prior experience, it
seems whatever movie I choose inevitably stinks. This year, I allowed my expectations to be raised; this time
would be different. The Himalayas is a box office smash in its native
South Korea and with titles like
The Throne, Assassination and
Veteran, my SK movie scorecard was pretty high in 2015. The fact
that it starred Hwang Jung-min, who is on a streak with the
award-winning hits, Ode to
My Father and Veteran, gave me confidence that The Himalayas would
be a safe bet for an actual enjoyable first movie experience of 2016.
That’s what I get for hoping.
Mountain climbing, it’s a thing. People do it. People break records at
it, too. When the opportunity to become the first Asian to climb
fourteen of the highest peaks in the Himalayas presents itself to
lifelong alpinist, Um Hong-gil, he goes for it. First, he’s gotta
assemble a crew. Besides his usual bank of trusty, experienced hands,
he takes on two newbies including the stubborn, ambitious Park Moo-taek,
who dreams of “conquering” the mountains. His egotistical delusion is
quickly and thoroughly shattered by Hong-gil, who hazes the would-be
climber into respecting the peaks for their power and majesty. The
mountain itself teaches the young feller its own lessons as their climb
pitches the pair into danger. Having lost expedition members along the
way, the two face avalanches and the innate unpredictability of nature
and circumstance while attempting to scale the face of the alp. When
they reach the summit, it’s a joyous moment that ultimately spells Hong-gil’s
retirement due to old injuries, but fires up his apprentice, who
captains his own treks up the mighty range. One such excursion leads to
every mountaineer’s nightmare as Moo-taek is lost in bad weather, with
Hong-gil too out of shape and infirm to help his friend.
Puerile, manipulative, schmaltzy and cheap-looking, The Himalayas is not
only one of the worst Korean films I’ve seen in ages, but one of the
worst films I’ve seen in a long time. The simple-minded script is
cheesy and predictable to the point of being downright insulting. There
is no cliché they can’t make room for. No such thing as a plot twist
need apply. This is so blatantly an attempt at creating a
crowd-pleasing formula, that it makes the work of “feel-good movie”
hackmeister, Chris Columbus look like dark, cutting-edge, indie fare.
This was two long hours of witless saccharine that had me reaching for
insulin as I clung to those precious IQ points that seemed to be
vacating my brain while watching this.
For a
movie about the world’s most famous and daunting mountain range, I would
never have expected The Himalayas to have some of the shabbiest
production values I’ve set eyes on. I’d have expected reels of grand
landscapes and exhilarating cinematography, but got cheap, quick-cut
camera tricks and ultra-tight close-ups in tents that looked as if they
were in a cozy Seoul studio. How do you make the freaking Himalayas
look bad? This chintzy aspect - along with no discernable action
sequences - took from the danger we are meant to feel for the
characters’ climbs. If I am under the impression you’re on a
soundstage, then I’m not fearing that you might plummet to your death
nearly 30,000 feet above solid ground, am I? What there are of long
range views of the mountains appears to be edited stock footage, or
perhaps shot on friendlier Korean slopes. Another issue I had was that
none of the climbers seemed to be as well-equipped for constant sub-zero
temperatures as I am going to the grocery store on a chilly winter
morning. So much exposed skin on faces, necks, hands, etc., was
probably meant to enable us to see the actors’ faces and gestures, but
did negate the threat of frostbite at every turn. I didn’t even see one
scarf on anybody. I’m pretty sure they had scarves in 2001. Also, for
a country as obsessed with skin care as Korea is, could no one have
brought some Chap-Stick?
(Additionally
in I-can’t-believe-what-I’m-looking-at news, the unsung heroes of The
Himalayas is most certainly the Sherpas, those minute masters of the
mountains as indispensable to the climbers as long johns. In this film,
we see two smallish men bearing the strangest ashy colouring on their
faces. As I’m unable to find a full cast listing, I cannot determine
whether they are actual original people from the mountain region, or, as
I suspect, just short Korean actors in Sherpa-face. Either way, the
sight of their artificially charcoalled complexions and pidgin
English/Korean added yet more head-scratching to this already
eczema-inducing experience.)
The
screenplay is terrifically witless and unclever, with set-ups that could
have been written by third-graders: ‘Oh, no, Hong-gil, there’s a
monsoon coming, you can’t keep going up the mountain. Turn around or
you’ll die.’ ‘Whatever, I’m the hero of this movie, so I have to keep
going.’ ‘Okay, Hong-gil, since you’re so great and we believe in you,
we’ll all rally together and go, too.’ That is, until it’s inconvenient
to the story and there’s some extra drama needed, but even then, it
reverts back to form by the film’s end. There is so much spoken
exposition of what the various dangers are; a monsoon is coming, we’re
almost out of food, we’ve lost our Sherpas, that the viewer almost
dreads what’s going to come out of the mouths of the axillary characters
next, because by the third or fourth replay of the same scenario, we
know it can’t be good news. The tear-jerking is shameless and
unrelenting. It doesn’t matter if the team is in the middle of a
perilous climb and there’s yet another storm heading right toward them (Are
there no weathermen in Nepal?), if our heroes need to have a sobbing
breakdown to mourn their losses and loudly reaffirm life and their bond
with each other, so be it.
This
dunderheaded script does less to memorialise the real life climbers and
incidents on which it’s based than to make me shake my head at anyone
crazy enough to voluntarily risk their lives in this way. After all,
it’s not as if the cure for cancer is on the top of Everest. These are
people who willingly put themselves in harm’s way for thrills and
vanity, and in the cases of several of the film’s characters, to the
detriment of their own families. Perhaps sensing the film’s lack of a
sympathetic connection to its action, director Lee Seok-hoon includes a
scene where a documentary crew asks one of Hong-gil’s team exactly why
they climbed mountains, and we don’t get a better answer than, “Because
it’s there.” In a meta moment, this line is even acknowledged by the
speaker as plagiarism.
The
Himalayas depends entirely on its cast to deliver the film. Led by
Hwang Jung-min (As mentioned, having a banner year of blockbusters)
whose own natural, laid-back persona is made slightly gruffer for a
nanosecond as his Hong-gil tries to whip his newest crew members into
shape, but falls back into that easygoing presence (I’m starting to
wonder if he’s not just being the same in every film?) after
smoothing out the rough edges of his relationship and bonding with the
impulsive Moo-taek. Surrounded by a group of other pro actors, the
good-natured camaraderie that Hwang seems to project in every movie is
The Himalayas’ sole grace, but that’s not meant to be the main lure of
this film - despite the movie’s own marketing giving the impression of
some sort of mountainside buddy comedy. Ostensibly, this is the
biography of the real Um Hong-gil, a man who made history, and the
triumphant and tragic events that shaped his life. That The Himalayas
has been reduced to a cheap-looking collection of schmaltzy clichés
packed into a witless, braindead script, shames everyone involved with
this mess.
If
only someone had pushed the film cans for The Himalayas off a mountain,
we’d be all the better for it.
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
January 1st, 2016

© 2006-2022 The Diva Review.com
|