I’ve
picked two recent movies seemingly different to each other in terms of their
outcome. In the movie Everest based on the ill-fated 11 May 1996 hiking expedition,
eight hikers perished, amongst them seasoned expedition leaders Rob Hall (Adventure
Consultants) and Scott Fischer (Mountain Madness); meanwhile in the movie The
Martian, astronaut Mark Watney manages to survive on Mars for seven months
through perseverance and ingenuity, before finally being rescued.
At
first glance these two movies seems polar opposites in relation to the theme of
human survival. I recall a friend who had watched both, remarking to me how she
enjoyed The Martian considerably more, as the movie Everest sort of left her
feeling “heavy”. In a weird
sense, having watched both movies in a short span of a mere few days between
each other, I felt a consistent uniform theme binding both shows together, as
if they were the flip side of each other.
Mid-way in the movie Everest, before
the joint expedition team made their doomed hike up the summit, a local guide Anatoli Boukreev had already ominously predicted, “There is competition between
every person on this mountain. The last word always belongs to the mountain.”
This state of how finite we human beings are relative to something so huge,
magnificent and menacing, Mount Everest as in the case of the first movie, is
precisely the same rationale which makes the second movie’s protagonist’s
eventual rescue so joyful. The fact that Mark Watney is able to subsist on a
planet which is scientifically unfavourable to human survival for as long as he
did, in time for this team mates to come back in time to rescue him. Of course
there was the selflessness of his team mates, willing to delay their return to
their families, even to the point of putting their own survival. Note that this
element too mirrors the first movie, where protagonist Rob Hall’s act of
sacrifice to accompany Doug Hansen on the ascent up South Summit again, despite
having already started on his own descent down, was the very critical move
which delayed his plans, resulting in him getting stranded on South Summit,
ending in tragedy.
This
omniscient, omnipotent presence in both movies, is indeed very akin to God
Himself, which is what the underlying uniform theme. Yes, there were good selfless
acts by protagonists in both movies, but ultimately it is up to this mightier
being who decides the final outcome. And perhaps our own minute act of selflessness,
may actually be a manifest of omniscience and omnipotence, in the very image of
the Almighty One, so the outcome for God’s plans for us may not be as linear or
static as we think it is.
I’ll
end off with the quote from Mark Watney towards the end of the second movie,
which happens to be a great contrast to the earlier quote from the movie
Everest. “Every human being has a basic instinct, to help each other out. If a
hiker gets lost in the mountains, people coordinate a search. If an earthquake
levels the city, people all over the world send emergency supplies. This
instinct is found in every culture without exception.” Instead of looking at
them as polar opposites, I would choose to look at them as elements which complete
each other into a whole.
“There is competition between
every person on this mountain. The last word always belongs to the mountain.”
Everest,
Anatoli Boukreev
“Every
human being has a basic instinct, to help each other out. If a hiker gets lost
in the mountains, people coordinate a search. If an earthquake levels the city,
people all over the world send emergency supplies. This instinct is found in
every culture without exception.”
The
Martian, Mark Watney
