I am a complete sucker for any story about mountains, and this is a true story of an attempt to understand what happened to George Mallory and Andrew Irvine when they tried to summit Everest in 1924. Mallory's body was found near the summit, leading to speculation that the men may have succeeded in reaching the summit and died on the way down. Conrad Anker and Leo Houlding recreate the historic climb which started in Tibet and required difficult rock climbing in the final stretch. (The modern route, pioneered by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary in 1953, required approval from the government of Nepal which Mallory did not obtain.) I won't spoil it for you by revealing what Anker and Houlding learned. It is amazing to see the primitive type of clothing, shoes, and equipment that Mallory and Irvine used! The mountain vistas are thrilling. I usually don't like "The Making of---" movies, but in this instance, I would very much like to know more about how The Wildest Dream was filmed.

The Wildest Dream: Conquest Of Everest is a 93 minute long film, directed by Anthony Geffen, that touches at one of the oldest dreams I had; to go rockhunting on an archaeological dig and find something magical and wondrous. As a child, I recall reading in a science book about Luos Agassiz and how he proved the fact that glaciers, indeed, do move, by pinpointing the spot where a mountain climber was lost on an Alpine Peak, predicting that the body would show up at the bottom of the glacier after a certain number of years, only to find the body just as predicted. This film does not open exactly in that manner, but it does open with modern mountain climber Conrad Anker finding the body of Mount Everest legend George Mallory in 1999, 75 years after he and a colleague, Sandy Irvine, were lost and presumed dead on the world's tallest mountain. This pushes Anker to want to try and prove that Mallory did reach the summit three decades earlier than Edmund Hillary. To do so, Anker and a colleague of his own, attempt to reproduce Mallory's ascent in vintage 1920s gear.

The film then alternates between the modern quest, made in 2007, and the original quest of Mallory, via archival films, photos, and letters. What drives Anker is the fact that Mallory seems to have made his descent in twilight, when he slipped and broke a leg, then dies on the slope. This indicates that he must have made a bid for the top before descending, for he was last seen near the top on the morning of June 8th, 1924, just a few hundred feet from the top, but his body was found almost 3000 feet lower. The time of his death is ascertained by the fact that he was not wearing the sun visors needed to prevent whiteouts from ice glare. Also, Mallory had promised to plant his wife's photo at the summit but the photo has never been found. Neither has Mallory's climbing partner, Irvine.

The film has spectacular scenery, but the cinematography, by Chris Openshaw, is nothing great. Geffen does a good job of interweaving the two tales, but far too much time is taken up on the silly and narcissistic modern tale. More time spent on Mallory's plight would have helped the film, while also lopping off 15-20 minutes of fat. The film is narrated by actor Liam Neeson. The film could have used, aside from a tighter focus on Mallory, a greater array of mountaineering expert and historian commentary but, overall, it is well suited to be an introduction to the life of a legendary hero of exploration's Golden Age's final years.

THE WILDEST DREAM tells the story of George Mallory's lifelong obsession with conquering the summit of Everest, culminating with his doomed third expedition in 1924 and the suggestion that he was indeed first to the top. With a stellar cast of voices including Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes and the late Natasha Richardson, the film blends the personal accounts of relatives, re-enactments, testimonies of historians, black-and-white films and photographs from Mallory's life and the correspondence between him and his wife. This creates a compelling piece that is part history, part mountaineering adventure and part love story. The atmospheric cinematography is a work of art (and an achievement in its own right given the challenging terrain),with vistas of the billowing clouds and snowcapped peaks below Everest, and the 'prodigious white fang' (as Mallory describes it) of the mountain itself. Mallory is brought to life with a poignancy that reveals the man behind the myth, whether as a tiny figure perched on a glacial rockface with the stars glittering above, or in his letter to his daughter where he describes himself as a 'greedy daddy' for craving cake and tea parties. Running parallel to this story is the modern-day expedition led by Conrad Anker, one of the mountaineers who found Mallory's body a decade ago. In his attempts to recreate Mallory's last expedition, additional angles emerge, providing insights into the psychology and dangers of climbing at high altitudes (particularly in 1924-style hobnail boots and gaberdine jackets). This is a compelling portrait of a man who proves that – as he says through the voice of Ralph Fiennes – 'there's no dream that mustn't be dared', even if the journey to the top is a one- way ticket.

Cambridge Film Festival Daily