“How many people have eaten at our dinner table who have died?” asks Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi of her then-husband, Jimmy Chin, in Everest: The Other Side, questioning whether they should continue filming life-threatening stunts. “It might take a while,” Chin replies after staring at the ceiling for a few seconds in stunned silence. The co-directors collectively rattle off six names of perished friends before their kids run in, breaking the tension and dissipating the possibility of further discussion.

This moment of self-reflection is striking for laying bare the debate over the ethics of Vasarhelyi and Chin’s filmmaking practices. In their Oscar-winning Free Solo from 2018, which chronicled American rock climber Alex Honnold’s record-setting ascent of El Capitan without the assistance of ropes, the filmmakers practically laughed in the face of death as their crew commented on the film’s camera setups. When it comes to Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson, life and adventure partners who set out to become the first people to ski down the forbidding north face of Mount Everest, facing mortality becomes no laughing matter.

The line between the compassion of a friend and the compulsion of a filmmaker is fertile terrain for exploration when the stakes are life and death. It’s a shame, then, that Vasarhelyi’s internal reckoning largely goes unexplored beyond the single table discussion in Everest: The Other Side, as the documentary quickly quashes her misgivings. Instead, it follows Chin’s impulse to indulge, rather than confront, Morrison as he darts toward danger.

It’s alarmingly easy to put on blinders like the filmmakers do and strap in fully for the thrill ride of what Morrison attempts, even after it’s revealed that Nelson died while skiing with him down the Manasalu summit in Nepal in 2022. It’s impressive on its own that he can summit the world’s tallest peak, but he must still possess the skill and strength to successfully complete the most difficult and treacherous ski descent on Earth. That the film captures this accomplishment in such immersive, clear detail without impeding it only heightens our amazement.

Everest: The Other Side offers an arresting illustration of what Vasarhelyi and Chin do best, pairing the nail-biting tension of a sports drama with the epic sweep of a nature documentary. Because their cameras bear witness to every step, the film is also genuinely terrifying to watch unfold, with the worst possible outcome never a remote possibility.

But unlike Alex Honnold, whose psychology proves as compelling as his physicality, Morrison is less intriguing off the slopes in the film. The man is easily understood as an adrenaline junkie through and through. Challenging himself by trying to accomplish first-of-their-kind feats, even into his 50s, keeps his inner fire alive. Some men build monuments like the Taj Mahal to memorialize their loved ones. Morrison descends mountains with a daredevil’s abandon.

Chin and Vasarhelyi, with the assistance of a sizable contingent of Nepalese laborers, are facilitators—or enablers—of what many will see as a twisted memorial rite, letting Morrison dictate the tone of Everest: The Other Side by meeting him where he is in his journey with grief. Whatever reservations Chin and Vasarhelyi might have about who these athletic achievements really serve go unexpressed, at least on camera. The film might stop short of endorsing Morrison’s feats, but the way it captures and conveys them is assuredly a hero’s edit.

Such proximity to Morrison’s pain at each step of the grueling process yields many moving emotional moments, especially at one point when he and the film’s crew reach thinner air high on the titular mountain. Here, Morrison notes, the veil between the physical and spiritual world seems to dissipate. Nelson’s presence feels profoundly palpable in this setting, as does the possibility of Morrison reuniting with her sooner rather than later.