Financial analyst Max Stainton has cerebral palsy and is a wheelchair user – “Give me a maths problem, I’ll be fine. Don’t ask me to put on my shirt,” he quips – and director Carl Woods, in his debut documentary, follows Stainton on a two-week charity trek to Everest base camp on horseback. Horse riding is incredibly demanding physically for Stainton, and this film is not only a fly-on-the-wall adventure doc, but an insight into the frustrations of being disabled and constantly dealing with other people’s stereotypes and assumptions.
It begins at home in London where Stainton lives with his partner, Candy. Giggling, they describe meeting when she was hired as his PA, and they fancied each other like mad. (“Inappropriate!”) Stainton explains that, with the trek, what he wants is to challenge society’s perceptions, the pigeonholing of him as that guy in a wheelchair. “TRAIN TRAIN TRAIN” says a sticker on the fridge. So, he does endless crunches with his physiotherapist, and walks up and down the stairs in his block of flats.
In the cold and altitude of Nepal, the trek turns out to be far more challenging than Stainton and his team anticipated. Candy, who admits that the Himalayas are not exactly her thing, struggles. For Stainton, the two weeks are physically painful and draining; on the toughest day he’s kicked by the horse four times and ends up walking uphill for six hours.
Reaching base camp is an incredible personal achievement but in the interview at home afterwards – which to be honest could have been more probing – Stainton evaluates the cost. The trip has left him more disabled and living with pain. He wonders if he’s been judging his self-worth by other people’s expectations too much. As Candy says, working with macho finance bros doesn’t help. It feels like a bitter finish to the film, but then comes a lovely happy ending – spoiler alert! – of a wedding and a baby.
• My Everest is released on 28 April in UK cinemas.
