There is a small faction of climbers for whom a mountain’s size and its supposedly un-ascendable conditions can prove to be the most tempting of challenges. The more demanding and dangerous the climb, theoretically, the greater the reward. Conrad Anker, the man who purportedly found George Mallory’s body near the peak of Everest in 1999 and has devoted his subsequent years to a series of almost unbelievably daunting expeditions, is one of these climbers. He must clearly believe that no journey is irresolvable, because what he puts himself and his crew through in “Meru” — a harrowing, gorgeous new doc directed by Anker’s fellow climbers Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, about the first ever journey up Mount Meru, one of the milestones of big-wall climbing — would shake most of us puny mortals to our very core. This is a striking, clear-eyed, and expressive film, and also an occasionally problematic one. It’s one of the most visually ravishing...
