On 13 May 1999, Michael Matthews set a new record, becoming the youngest British climber to summit Mount Everest. He was 22. But in the hours immediately afterwards, during his descent, he disappeared. His body was never found.
In Finding Michael his younger brother, the reality TV star Spencer Matthews, embarks on a very personal mission to locate the body of his brother and bring him home to rest, more than 20 years later. As Michael went missing at above 8,000 metres, in what is known as the “death zone”, any search and recovery mission would be horribly risky, and one of the highest ever undertaken.
In 2017, the Matthews family received a photograph of a body on Everest that looked as if it might be wearing the same colour summit suit that Michael was wearing when he went missing. The photograph left the seed of an idea in Spencer’s mind, and made him consider that they might still be able to find his brother’s body. He discussed it with his mother, his sister and his wife, who all agreed that if it were possible, they should try to bring Michael home.
The programme starts as a detective story. The photograph – whose provenance is unclear – was taken from a distance, and it is not immediately apparent whose body is there in the snow. Spencer goes to meet some of his brother’s old climbing friends, to find out what he can about how to identify Michael, and how best to brief the experts who are willing to go into the death zone and look for him. In doing so, he begins another journey, learning more about the brother who died when Spencer was just 10 years old.
At points, it turns into a boys’ own adventure, complete with sweeping orchestral soundtrack and vast, cinematic shots of the mountain range. Before Spencer heads to Nepal, in the brief window when it is possible to attempt Everest each year, he goes to talk to his old friend, Bear Grylls. The pair met when the explorer gave a talk at Spencer’s school about conquering Everest, and Spencer brought up his big brother’s achievement. Grylls is well aware of the risks, and cautions Spencer about his own ambitions to get involved, pointing out that, on average, seven people a year die attempting to climb the mountain.
Still, Spencer wants to get to base camp, at least, where he can help coordinate the mission. Parts of this film are beautiful, even when dealing with the most hostile of environments. The eight-day trek to base camp takes place on foot, to get climbers used to the higher altitude and thinner air. It is stunning. What this film does with it is even more lovely. Spencer gets to see footage of his brother’s trek, filmed on a camcorder. To see them journeying through the exact same spots, with the footage placed side by side, is incredibly moving, and even more so when Spencer reveals that he has never seen any recordings of his brother before.
There are two strong threads that bind the programme together. It brings Michael to life by piecing together who he was, through friends and family members remembering him, and through photographs and video, including one haunting piece of film from his last night alive. And it is a revealing look at grief – especially the grief felt by those left behind when a person dies so young. Spencer admits that he did not express his emotions freely as a child. Even now, he does not seem to know what to do with his feelings about it all; he appears genuinely surprised by a realisation that raising the possibility of hope, that he might find Michael’s body, could be upsetting to his family if he did not succeed.
As well as the risks to the climbers involved in retrieving a body from such a dangerous part of the mountain, this is clearly a hugely expensive and complex undertaking, and it is only happening because of Spencer’s high profile. The fact that this is exceptional is never more clear than later on in the film, when the notion that there might be only one body to find up there is disabused. We are reminded of the sheer scale of the loss of life, and to see it so plainly is shocking.
Finding Michael does its best to acknowledge this, and what transpires, you suspect, is more complicated than what this moving film initially set out to explore.
• Finding Michael is on Disney+ now
