Memorable, crazy movie

Good movie but grossly overrated

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

An amazing documentary about three extreme alpine climbers attempting to summit Mount Meru in the Indian Himalayas This film records their second attempt at conquering the impossible Shark's Fin peak, hoping to be the first team in recorded history to do so). The climbing scenes are as terrifying as they are gorgeous (how did they film this thing anyway?!), but it is the personal stories of the climbers that engaged me the most. These are some of the best climbers in the world - their skill, persistence, determination, risk-taking, and obsessiveness about climbing are difficult for most to understand. For example, one of the team, Renan Ozturk, sustained a depressed skull fracture / broken neck / vertebral artery injury in a skiing accident just five months prior to summitting. People! Most doctors would advise patients with even a concussion to not fly for a period of time. Yet, Renan fought back and just five months later was on the side of Meru. In a heart-stopping and heart-breaking turn of bad luck, he had a mild stroke - at nearly 18,000 feet up the mountain. And insisted on continuing the next morning - even though he could not speak, he was physically OK. Still...who does that?! Another climber, cinematographer Jimmy Chin, almost died four days after Renan's injury in an avalanche - on the same mountain where he and Renan had been filming together. It was Jimmy who found Renan injured, lying facedown in the snow. The leader of the team, Conrad Anken, lost his best friend Alex Lowe while on a climb together - and ended up marrying Alex Lowe's wife and adopting their three boys. And that is just a little bit about these incredible men.You couldn't write a more compelling story - and yet this is real life! Superbly filmed, beautifully written, and emotionally wrenching bu5 ultimately deeply inspiring. If you don't get choked up along with these guys at the surprising end to their impossible dream...check your pulse!

I suspect that for mountain climbers and wannabes, this is a 10 star film, so I'll give it stars for them. And it certainly is beautiful.However, no matter how many climbing films I watch, I never get a good answer to the question in my mind which is, why do this incredibly dangerous thing? Jon Krakauer says, "he had to," but that is patently false. Nobody has to!And so I am left at the end of this film with the same judgments I always have. I think, these men are bad sons, bad brothers, then bad boyfriends, then bad husbands, then bad fathers. I can't honor them. I suspect they are a little bit stupider than the average person. I suspect a psychiatrist could diagnose them with some mental illness. I'm struggling here to come to a kinder place, but I cannot. And if you don't want people to make judgments of you for doing a stupid, risky, suicidal thing, then you either shouldn't do this thing at all or you shouldn't make movies bragging about it.

Disappointing cliché. 3 Flat boring characters cannot get enough explaining how difficult there challenge was and how tough they are. How stupid People can be. I have seen about dozens of these commentaries. All those guys tell you exactly the same. Hollow dogmas about frostbite, being tired, all predictable dangers etc. Etc. Etc. The views on the mountains are almost as beautiful as the ones I made during high mountain tracking in the Alps. Most difficult, biggest, highest, coldest, biggetjes avelanche, extremely shocking, do not start to count... Sick symptoms of kapitalistic and spoiled grown ups. This movie kills you faster then climbing the Meru.

"Meru" (2015 release; 90 min.) brings the story of three guys attempting to peak the top of Meru, an ultra-difficult mountain in the Himalayas that is considered as possible the toughest climb in the world. As the movie opens, we see the three guys in a hanging cod on the side of the mountain, looking utterly exhausted. We then go "3 Years Earlier", where we get to know Conrad Aker, fearless climber for whom "Meru is the culmination of everything I've wanted to accomplish as a climber (we later learn that he's summited Everest a number of times, but failed to summit Meru in one previous attempt). We also get to know Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk. Will they succeed and conquer Meru? To tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.Couple of comments: first, I pretty much knew going in that I would like this documentary as I am a sucker for these types of "you gotta see it to believe it" type documentaries. This one may top them all. If you think Everst is hard, just wait until you see Meru's Shark's Fin towards the top of the mountain, a 4,000 ft climb straight up of solid rock. Second, Jimmy Chin decided to catch everything on camera, and hence is a co-director (along with his wife), co-editor and co-producer. The footage that we get to see is nothing short of jaw-dropping. At times, I felt dizzy just looking at the screen. Can you imagine what it must've been like to actually do the climb? But wait! there is more! Just as you think that the documentary is all about the quest for Meru, we get a couple of side stories that filled in the human aspects and as a result made the movie even that much more compelling to watch. Third, there are a number of talking heads giving further insights on what we are seeing, and by far the most interesting of them is Jon Krakauer, author of "Into Thin Air". Last, there is some great music in the documentary, including from J. Ralph, Explosions In the Sky and others."Meru" recently opened at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati without any pre-release fanfare or advertising. I couldn't wait to see it. The early evening week day screening where I saw this at was not attended very well, I am sorry to say. I love documentaries, and I love watching extreme sports (emphasis on watching, ha!). "Meru" is a riveting documentary that will make your heart skip a beat or two. HIGHLY, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!