Coupled with a strong cast, The Climbers effectively highlights the difficulties and dilemmas in scaling the world’s tallest mountain in an era with less advanced technology and the extreme weather as an archenemy.
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The Climbers is a Chinese drama based on the historical events of the Chinese National Mountaineering Team making their ascent on Mount Everest in 1960 and 1975. The movie stars Jing Wu (吴京) as Wuzhou Fang (方五洲), who is one of the mountaineers in the first expedition in 1960. Despite having reached the summit with Songlin Qu (曲松林) played by Yi Zhang (张译), Wuzhou and team were not recognised internationally for they failed to produce evidence of their summit. This was due to Wuzhou discarding the camera in an attempt to save Songlin during an avalanche. The incident had caused conflict between the two, even during the second expedition in 1975. Wuzhou stood by his decision to save his teammate, while Songlin, the photographer of the team, would rather give his life than to bring disgrace to his home country.
The Good
Unlike the usual, The Climbers does not illustrate just one single attempt to scale the world’s tallest mountain. It showed the realistic aspect of mountain-climbing, where rigorous training was involved, and multiple attempts had to be made to reach the summit due to accidents and unpredictable weather.
The movie also posed a dilemma between bearing the responsibility to save a teammate versus sacrificing for a supposed greater good. It will push you to consider what is ethically right and what is morally right.
The Climbers boasts a strong cast with Ziyi Zhang (章子怡) who played the lover of Wuzhou and meteorologist Ying Xu (徐缨); Boran Jing (井柏然) who played the new photographer of the team Guoliang Li (李国梁); and Ge Hu (胡歌) who played a fellow mountaineer Guang Yang (杨光).
The Bad
Wuzhou had a message that he wanted to tell Ying since the start of the movie, after the first expedition. But the process of conveying this message, probably in an attempt to create suspense, faced a lot of obstacles. We all could guess what the protagonist is going to say, but there are way too many hurdles to cross and they are obviously deliberate. More often than not, the scene would annoyingly go “I want to tell you… The thing I want to say is…” and the conversation was cut off.
The sub-plot on the relationship between Guoliang and Mudan Hei (黑牡丹), portrayed by Choenyi Tsering (曲尼次仁), could also be deepened and made less vague to bring forth emotions during touching moments.
And The Summary
Coupled with a strong cast, The Climbers effectively highlights the difficulties and dilemmas in scaling the world’s tallest mountain in an era with less advanced technology and the extreme weather as an archenemy.
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