40 Days at Base Camp

This one is by request...

When my wife was pregnant she wanted to get a doula.  A doula, as I learned, is a birthing coach.  Not quite a mid-wife, a doula pretty much provides support before, during and shortly after the birth.  Kind of like a guide; at least that's how I saw her.  So much so, in fact, that I kept calling her a Sherpa.  At first she seemed annoyed and when she finally corrected me, I said that I thought of her as someone helping us over the mountain of child birth.  She seemed satisfied, the wife rolled her eyes between contractions and I was pleased with myself.

40 Days at Base Camp is a documentary, by Dianne Whelan about the different types of people who try to climb Mt. Everest.  I say "try" because the trailer tells us that 1 in 4 die trying.

I'm not a mountain climber, but I know people who have climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro.  Apparently Kilimanjaro is a walk in the park compared to Mt. Everest.  I prefer a walk in the park, myself.

The trailer is both visually beautiful and harsh.  You have the beauty and clearly unforgiving majesty of the great white and grey mountain juxtaposed with colourful tents, colourful clothing, garbage, waste and death.  We also learn from the trailer the motivations of many people from all over the world.  I think that is the point of this documentary; Whelan spends 40 days at base camp listening, without prejudice or judgment, to the stories of these climbers. That alone, could be amusing or entertaining.

Personally, I'd rather take a Bugatti Veyron or Ariel Atom V8 around a racetrack, but that documentary, likely titled, 40 Days in the Hospital wouldn't be as interesting as 40 Days at Base Camp.

I think we'll rent this one.