Infinite Storm
Naomi Watts plays a mountain climber caught in a deadly storm who must save herself and a stranger in this white-knuckle dramatic thriller.
Pam Bales knows her stuff.
An experienced mountain climber and nurse, Pam knows the trails of the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire like the back of her hand. She even serves on a small volunteer rescue crew that helps tenderfoots who not infrequently get caught in the harsh passes and deadly winter blizzards.
“Infinite Storm,” the new dramatic thriller about real events that happened in 2010, is the story of an ordinary woman capable of extraordinary things. Pam, played by Naomi Watts, is on a solitary journey — both geographically and metaphorically — when a bad storm hits and she is trapped on the mountain.
She manages to save herself after falling in a deep crevasse because, as I’ve mentioned, Pam knows about survival. But then her peril is compounded when she encounters a stranger who will surely die without her help.
Pam follows mysterious footprints in the snow leading up to the peak. Upon finally reaching there, she discovers an odd figure: a young man wearing shorts and only a light jacket. He’s already half-frozen and semi-conscious, and is surely minutes from death when she springs into action.
The rest of the movie, directed by Malgorzata Szumowska from a screenplay by Joshua Rollins, follows their treacherous journey back down the mountain. The man is barely communicative, unable even to give his name, so Pam calls him “John.” John isn’t nearly the mountaineer she is, so Pam must support him much of the way, almost like a parent leading a child.
A careful person, she layers him in the extra clothes she always packs along with food and hot coffee from the cafe/outfitter at the base of the mountain, run by an old friend (Denis O'Hare). He’d warned her not to go up the mountain that day, owing to uncertain weather forecast, but knows it’s her therapy to be up there.
Flashbacks during the trek reveal a little more about Pam, focusing on her joyful time years earlier as mother to two young girls. It colors her determination to go on, even though John at times is unhelpful, even removing the hat she has given him or deliberately walking in the wrong direction.
It’s another fine performance of solitary strength by Watts after recently appearing in another one, “The Desperate Hour.” She has a way of empathetically conveying the sense of a person discovering reservoirs of determination she never knew she had.
Pam seems almost super-powered on the surface, but as we’ll discover she’s a broken person just like many of us, with crippling fears and traumatic experiences. As some wise person once said, bravery is not the lack of fear — it’s the ability to overcome it and go on.
It’s a starkly beautiful movie, and one wonders how they were able to shoot scenes with a torrent of snow and ice whipping at the characters. It looks too authentic to be on a soundstage. One definitely gets the sense of being lost and exposed to the cruelest elements Mother Nature can summon.
I won’t say much about the story’s final chapter, other than it’s probably not what you will expect. But that’s how people are: we often don’t act in logical ways with neat, straight lines. Somewhere in the chaotic web of behavior, it’s up to us discern meaning.
“Infinite Storm” is at once a white-knuckle adventure story, but also a surprisingly hefty internal exploration of the people we encounter doing things that will amaze.