They call it the God’s Eye View shot. When directors occasionally film from immediately above a set or location, it gives the audience an omniscient perspective on the action. Now and again – and such a shot occurs in Everest – the audience can be lifted above the bird’s eye, even above the clouds. Some early film directors favoured the technique, and in another way, too, Everest is an ambitious film that returns to first principles of cinema. Like Hales’ Tours, the moving picture landscapes first projected through the windows of stationary railroad cars at the 1904 St Louis Exposition, this new 3-D film transports us where our bodies cannot go. The premise of Everest is fact: in May 1996, an unexpectedly severe storm claimed the lives of five climbers in one