This has less to do with the wounds themselves both visible and veiled than with the astonishingly candid confessions of their bearers, hammered home all too often by careening combat footage. Whether displaying suck it up stoicism or hanging by a thread fragility, these diverse men and women vividly convey the profound personal transformations their deployment has wrought. Scaling a 20,000 foot peak in Nepal might offer healing for some and for others an opportunity to test mobility and stamina; for everyone it’s an apt analogy for the challenge of readjusting to civilian life. 

Capturing this inaugural expedition of a program called Soldiers to Summits, the director, Michael Brown (a renowned mountaineer), digs below the adventure itself to reveal the gaping holes in our veteran care. Doing so, he translates a collage of experiences some desperate, some hopeful, all tragic into a first person commentary on the malign reverberations of war.