Behind the counter at a Whole Foods Market in Connecticut, a woman from Nepal goes unnoticed. A single mother, Lhakpa Sherpa takes public transportation to work. No one around her suspects she has summited Mount Everest in her homeland several times. That jaw-dropping feat of physical and mental discipline is an even greater accomplishment considering her upbringing as an illiterate woman in an utterly patriarchal environment. Now, her story of perseverance, not only as a climber but as an immigrant and survivor, is the subject of the poignant and heart-pounding documentary “Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa” from “Waste Land” director Lucy Walker.
Walker first presents segments of an interview where the bubbly Sherpa, speaking in her hard-earned English, wears colorful traditional attire that contrasts with how we’ll later see her: in mountain climbing gear. She shares her belief in a spiritual connection with Everest — for her a female deity that serves as her North Star — and recalls her childhood in the mountains among the Sherpa ethnic group of Nepal, all of whom share the same last name and whose first name reflects the day of the week on which they were born.
Against the backdrop of recent footage of the area where the Sherpa live and images shot decades ago for a program about the heroine’s first summit, she recalls her lack of opportunities as consequences of sexism (she would drop her brother off at school every morning but wasn’t allowed to attend). Her determination eventually convinced the government to fund an all-women expedition to climb Everest, which Sherpa led. Walker employs multiple cinematographers to capture the distinct and geographically separated storylines of the doc. One of them focuses on Sunny, Sherpa’s oldest daughter, grappling with entrenched trauma. The images shot in the inhospitable climate at high altitude during the climb are certainly the most arresting. These moments of real-life, not simulated danger make the viewer instantly conscious of the risk the person behind the camera runs.
But it’s precisely in those snow-covered slopes or finding refuge in a tent that sways to the will of the wind that Sherpa feels most in control of her destiny. Everest helps her recalibrate when turmoil unfolds in her personal life. In one of the film’s most heart-rending moments, Sherpa explains that after becoming pregnant with her son out of wedlock, she couldn’t return home to her parents because her condition brought them shame. It was only after she scaled Everest the first time and became famous throughout Nepal that her father acknowledged her by saying she was now equal to a son in status. And while that gesture had a validating power for Sherpa, it reflects the alarmingly unequal standing that Nepali women endure at home and in the workforce.
Collaborating with several editors, Walker expertly folds in Sherpa’s distinct facets to transcend simplistic triumphalism. While in her element climbing, Sherpa boasts a sturdy demeanor, but she moves with an emotional fragility elsewhere, especially after marrying and moving to the U.S. with George Dijmarescu, an experienced climber from Romania. Most of the stomach-dropping shots come from Sherpa’s most recent ascent, her record-breaking 10th. The significance surpasses outside recognition, because Sherpa needs to regain the characteristic self-possession after years of abuse from Dijmarescu, not only at home but on the mountain, as it was documented in the 2009 book “High Crimes,” which detailed a troubled expedition.
The dissonance between the woman introduced early in this biographical piece, who cut her hair short to pass for a man and work as an Everest guide, and the immigrant woman trapped in a country not her own with a violent alcoholic husband, makes “Mountain Queen” a more interestingly jagged appreciation of its protagonist.
Yet, Walker’s most unexpected insight into her complex and potentially contradictory subject comes from including one of Dijmarescu’s friends, who agrees to speak to Shiny, Sherpa’s youngest daughter, about a side of her father she had rarely considered. The conversation never excuses the monster (or Yeti, as Sherpa refers to him) he became, but refrains from righteously simplistic moralizing about problematic individuals. Dijmarescu’s humanity and own wounds are acknowledged, both for the sake of his children, but on a narrative level, as a way to address how one’s personal sorrows never justify inflicting pain on others.
Sherpa could have been deemed inspirational solely on the merits of the literal and metaphorical heights she has reached, in spite of the cumulus of limitations on her mountainous path. But her bravery to expose one of the toughest periods of her existence, where she was momentarily stripped of her intrepid fearlessness, deserves double the admiration. In Walker’s hands, it becomes clear that Sherpa’s genuine humility and positive outlook emerged from confronting seemingly unsurmountable challenges, which she bent to her will by way of unwavering resolve.