rsjf-163-26898 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.

JEF7REY HILDNER (StoryArchitect) Divorce can crush you.No, I'm not talking about Meru. That's the lead I wish I'd written for my commentary on Her. www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/reviews-734But IMDb won't let me revise my commentary, because I hit the max tweaks IMDb allows.So, undaunted—a fan of non sequitur, incongruity, Russian Formalist "strange-making," and eccentric creative leaps!—I won't bury the lead this time. Even though the lead doesn't go with Meru. I know, go figure.But I did get something right in my Her commentary: I introduced the concept that I call The Symbolic Triangle.Her spins around a One-Word Theme*: Divorce. The only way through the dark labyrinth of divorce? Acceptance. Her presents a Rite of Passage story that requires the hero, Theo Twombley, to move through the heartache and grief of divorce into an emotional space where he accepts his fate.And the simple geometry of Her's story triangle helps us see through the sizzle to the substance of the movie's deft thematic structure.THE SYMBOLIC TRIANGLE. 1. TITLE: Her (secondarily, the digital-woman played by Scarlett Johansson—the attractive distractor; primarily, Catherine, the real-life woman who dumps the story's hero). 2. ONE-WORD THEME: Divorce. 3. HERO'S NAME: Theo Twombley (screenwriter Spike Jonze's artfully chosen name, which I translate: "A Man For Whom Women Are 'Deities Unknown'").Which brings us to Meru.Meru prompted me to reconfigure the geometry. I shifted to an iconic geometry shared by architecture, painting, literature, and cinema—the archetypal shape of windows, walls, and rooms, of canvases, books, and movie screens.Enter —THE SYMBOLIC RECTANGLE.Anchored by four cornerstones of thematic unity crucial to the art of story design:1. TITLE | 2. ONE-WORD THEME | 3. SPECIAL WORLD | 4. HERO'S NAMESame as The Symbolic Triangle—except I added Special World.I learned about the Special World from David McKenna​, who co-wrote with Christopher Vogler​ the book ​"Memo from the Story Department," in which Vogler presents the concept "one word theme​.​" I took David's screen writing course at Columbia University. And one day during a class break, we walked and talked. I'd just watched All the President's Men, and I asked David, "What's the Special World?" Now, I was thinking along the lines of The Washington Post, Investigative Journalism, Political Corruption, Abuse of Power...You get the picture.So imagine my surprise when David said, "The Wasp & the Jew." Ah! Woodward & Bernstein. That blew me away. And stuck.My contenders for the Special World of All the President's Men play a role in story design: ARENA. And thanks to Barbara Nicolosi, who unpacks this concept in her screenwriter talks (catharsis.com), we can distinguish between Special World and Arena.But where does Arena fit into The Symbolic Rectangle? Well, I had to mull that over. And I didn't want to turn the rectangle into a pentagon. For symbolic reasons, rectangle makes wayyyyy more sense. As an architect, a painter, and a screenwriter, no way I'm going to base my work on a pentagon! So it hit me: Make the Arena the space defined by the four corners of The Symbolic Rectangle.Think of a story's Arena as Central Park. Or as The Lawn at UVA. The space the sacred space defined by the perimeter. The stage on which the drama unfolds.Back to Meru.THE SYMBOLIC RECTANGLE: MeruFour Corners:1. TITLE: Meru—Meru means "High"2. ONE-WORD THEME: Trust3. SPECIAL WORLD: Team4. HERO'S NAME: Conrad Anker—German origins: Conrad means "bold" and rad "counsel" (rad: "very appealing, good radical"). Anker means "anchor"—a person who provides strength and support.Space:5. ARENA: Mountain ClimbingSure, Meru's a documentary, but the filmmakers clearly signal their awareness of story-design concepts encompassed by The Symbolic Rectangle. (Talk about luck for the hero's name!)Meru tells a story about a trio of brave-beyond-measure mountaineers. But Meru also tells a story about us. Because as Robert McKee says in his workshop and book, Story, every movie is a metaphor for life. A metaphor for my life and your life.Meru sends us the message: To reach our high goal, we too must act boldly—guided by radical good counsel—and provide strength and support for a team in whom we place our trust.Meru asks: Like Conrad Anker and his team, do you have the wherewithal, courage, and bold character to sacrifice everything to achieve your worthy ideal? And when your goal's finally within reach, do you have the humility, wisdom, and grit it takes to retreat? Like the mountain climbers—and filmmakers—did just 150 feet short of the summit? (The filmmakers didn't have a movie after team Anker's 2008 unsuccessful climb.) Or are you so hypnotized by your goal that you blunder, ignoring wise counsel, your inner GPS? Do you have the brains, heart, and guts to hit the reset button? To regroup? To "fail, fail again, fail better," as Samuel Beckett put it? Can you endure an ordeal that doubles or triples in magnitude as you scale your mountain?Because a mountain can crush you.Meru's heroic story impels us to more fully realize our own heroic story. We climb to the summit of the human spirit. And return to base camp transformed, dumbstruck by a team of people powered by audacity, tenacity, foresight, mettle, and trust. And love.McKenna taught me, "The only power of a storyteller is to withhold."Where does WITHHOLD fit into The Symbolic Rectangle? First take: the Perimeter—the line that connects the four corners and outlines the Arena. Because that line? That's a story's Power Line.Dimension six of The Symbolic Rectangle.Meru's Perimeter?6. WITHHOLD: (See the movie.)______________________________________* See "Memo from the Story Department," by Christopher Vogler & David McKenna© Copyright 2015 by JEF7REY HILDNER

gauthamdn This is a beautiful documentary i have watched in a while now. To decide to fail after 17 days at 20000ft at the first attempt and to go back and scale the Meru its breathtaking. I don't know how they manage to take video of this assent. The hanging Tent scenes, the panoramic Himalayas is just beautiful and. First i thought it was another normal dramatized movie, but there is no drama in it, Just the real story and the narration will hold you on. You also gasp for breath in between and skip couple of heart beats at sometimes.Its about the passion, its challenging, its unbelievable, its inspiring. Like it says , "Its unpredictable,dangerous and unknown"

Paul Allaer "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!