When a climber gets caught in a blizzard, she encounters a stranded stranger and must get them both down the mountain before nightfall.
Chuck says:
There’s a great deal to admire in Malgorzata Szumowska’s “Infinite Storm,” a mostly true story of an incredible rescue undertaken by a bullheaded woman of uncommon determination and fortitude. Its central disaster is rendered in such a realistic manner that it effectively drives home the danger its characters find themselves in, while the performance from Naomi Watts in the lead role is the sort of solid work we’ve come to expect from the veteran actor. However, Szumowska and screenwriter Joshua Rollins fail to stick the landing, playing fast and loose with the facts in the third act in order to shoehorn in a message concerning grief and healing that’s forced and unconvincing.
Taking place in 2010, the setting is New Hampshire’s brutal Mt. Washington, a peak said to contain “the worst weather in the world” by the locals. Pam Bales (Naomi Watts) is the sort of admirable, frustrating person who ignores dire forecasts, convinced she can deal with any storm. Then again, perhaps she has a death wish, as it’s intimated she’s recognizing a personal tragedy of some sort by setting out on a day most of us would stay indoors.
Sure enough, she encounters a blistering storm so severe that she fears for her life and starts back to safety. However, she hears a voice crying in the wind, one she follows despite her best judgement. Miraculously, she finds a young man wearing a thin coat and tennis shoes, slowly freezing to death. Despite his resistance, Bales takes it upon herself to drag this lost soul -who she dubs John (Billy Howle)- off the mountain, saving him whether he wants it or not.
The trek they undertake is an arduous one. Thick snow, gale force winds and subzero temperatures make every step they take a struggle. Szumowska captures the horrific storm the duo must combat, as well as the vast open spaces they must traverse, with an immediacy that proves immersive. Rather than the latest superhero epic, this is sort of film that should be shown in the IMAX format. And while the pair’s trek is a slow one, credit Szumowska for keeping the story moving in such a way that it never lags.
To be sure, the film plays fast and loose with some of its internal logic regarding hypothermia, the hazards of getting wet in frigid weather and the time needed to combat it. I suppose these points can be forgiven; oversights such as these are part-and-parcel of survival cinema.
However, once safety is reached Rollins takes some liberties with the story that don’t sit well. A meeting between Bales and John sometime after the rescue, an event that never took place, feels tacked on and contrived. Their sharing of the traumatic experiences, similar enough that they’re able to create a connection that eluded them on the mountain, feels a bit too convenient.
I’m all for a certain measure of historic license being taken, an approach that’s unavoidable where adapting true stories to the big screen is concerned. However, when this approach results in a shift in tone so egregious that it jeopardizes the integrity and tone of the story, that’s a problem. While Bales and her charge are fighting the elements, “Infinite Storm” is an engrossing story. However, once terra firma is reached, it’s narrative is suddenly on shaky ground.
2 1/2 Stars
Pam says
“Infinite Storm” is based on the true story of a White Mountain Search and Rescue Team member, Pam Bales (Naomi Watts) who stumbled upon a lone, poorly equipped hiker in the treacherous mountains. The film harnesses Pam’s chilling story, allowing us to walk in her boots, step by step to the harrowing end.
It’s late fall. The New Hampshire landscape, beautiful with its snow speckled mountain peaks looming in the background, beckon Pam to attempt to summit. As she awakens early on this pivotal morning, we can feel the air of tragedy both in front of and behind her. Peacefully, she treks through the new snow, crunching softly beneath each step. The sun’s warmth allows Pam to quickly ascend a nearly invisible trail and we know this woman is as familiar with the mountain as she is her own set of hands. Every crevice, every tree branch, she knows her way, but the muffled, comforting sounds of near silence and solitude quickly changes as the winds pick up and the snow-laden clouds close in. The weather is quickly changing and Pam abandons her goal of bagging this peak for the umpteenth time, but to her amazement, she sees a set of footprints, tennis shoes, no less, heading toward the Ridgeline. Pam’s training kicks in and this late fall hike becomes a search and rescue mission, knowing that the hiker is likely the owner of the lone car in the parking lot she spotted earlier.
What begins as a gorgeous walk in the woods quickly becomes a race against mother nature to save not only herself, but a hiker wearing a track jacket, cargo shorts, and tennis shoes. Nearly frozen in a seated position high above the tree line, Pam attempts to rouse and warm this man she names Jon (Billy Howle) but the will to live seems to have long abandoned this man. Lifting him to his feet and nearly dragging him along the path in the hopes of reaching the parking lot before nightfall, the two encounter myriad issues that you would expect — frostbite, hypothermia, dehydration — and others that simply take your breath away.
We witness Pam’s knowledge base which saves her from suffocating in a tree well or losing sight of the trail, both of which had my heart racing as I watched. It was Pam’s determination to not only survive, but give Jon a chance to live that kept me on the edge of my seat. Jon, fighting it at each and every turn, literally and figuratively, anyone else would have given up and let him do what he wanted, but Pam didn’t or she couldn’t. And we feel that we were right there with them, feeling the effects of the cold and wet snow as it pummeled them, taunting and daring them to move on. Mother Nature can be cruel as we see Jon’s feet having turned black and purple from exposure. His dehydration and hypothermia effected his cognitive skills as he responded to Pam in odd or indifferent ways. And this also gives us insight into his past trauma which we assume he is attempting to escape.
This hike turned rescue mission gives us moments into Pam’s past as well. Just glimpses at first as it piques our interest to know and understand more about this woman. Of course, by the end, we understand that foreboding feeling from the beginning and why she lives what most would consider a closed-off life. But as brutal and unforgiving as Mother Nature can be, she is also a healing entity which Pam needed desperately.
Watts as of recently, seems drawn to roles which require little or no accompaniment by other actors as demonstrated in “The Desperate Hour” and now “Infinite Storm.” The entire film rests on her capable shoulders, carrying the burden of storytelling with her skillful acting and reactions. Not for a moment do we doubt that she is in the cold, brutal mountains attempting to save a young man. And Howle, while his lines are few, must convince us that he wants to die and that the effects of the cold have impaired his cognition and physical capabilities. Together, with very little said, they bring us into the dangers of the mountains.
This is a gorgeous film that drops you into a world most of us wouldn’t dare to enter. It’s cinematically stunning even though the White Mountains of New Hampshire are actually in Slovenia. The artful sound design gives us comfort or fear, harmonically blended to elicit just the right emotion and with the deft direction of Malgorzata Szumowska, we feel the environment and all that the mountains provide.
While there are some “Hollywood” and contrived moments interspersed in the film, I can forgive it as the emotional overload of reality predominated the story. It didn’t need to add these elements — timing changes, additional and improbable harrowing events — but it wasn’t distracting enough to take away from the message and the film’s content overall.
3 1/2 Stars
