One of the greatest adventures ever told on film, Meru centers on a trio of professional mountain climbers, or alpinists, to use the industry term, as they try and try again to summit the single most coveted, challenging peak in the Himalayas of northern India.

Mount Meru is 21,000 feet high, the last few thousand feet of which is a sheer rock wall that seems impossible to climb. This is called, fittingly, the Shark’s Fin, which, if you’re like me, is hard to even look at without your stomach dropping out, let alone actually climb. Since progress up its unforgiving incline is very slow, and temperatures are absolutely arctic, the climbers actually set up camp on it, dangling off the ledge in a suspended tent.

In 2008, longtime climbing partners, and possibly the two finest mountaineers in the world, Jimmy Chin and Conrad Anker, took their best shot at reaching this seemingly impossible summit. Rounding out their crew was Renan Ozturk, a climbing prodigy, who is as close to the real-life Spider-Man as one can get. Ozturk was unknown to Chin, and Chin usually only went on dangerous expeditions with people he knew well and trusted. But since this was the great Conrad Anker vouching for him, Chin knew Ozturk had to be the real deal.

According to Chin, the main reason for assembling their quest into a film is to show a wider audience what an amazing person Anker is. In the alpinist community, he is a legend, like Laird Hamilton in surfing or Dale Earnhardt in race car driving. Alpinists are often criticized for taking unnecessary risks, while race car drivers take similar risks yet are wildly popular. Meru, in addition to its many other merits, will give mainstream audiences their best look into a truly amazing sport, and the opportunity to become fans.

Chin’s other professions are photography and filmmaking, so if you’re wondering which intrepid cameraman has captured all this incredible footage, it is Chin himself. This is a first ascent, meaning no human being has ever managed to ascend to Meru’s summit atop the vicious Shark’s Fin. It’s a bit like seeing Sir Edmund Hillary conquer Mount Everest, if he had state of the art digital video equipment (and no sherpas).

Their 2008 summit bid came within a few hundred feet of success, but discretion got the better part of valor, and they decided not to put their lives in an unacceptable level of risk. Watching this climb makes it seem obvious that they would never attempt this again—who would go through something so arduous and dangerous once, let alone twice?

The following year, a trio of Slovenian alpinists, considered the vanguard of alpine excellence, contacted Anker and Chin for insight into how to tame the impossible peak. They obliged, sharing what they learned, since they had gotten closer than anyone. But when they, too, failed, Anker knew that it was possible no one would ever conquer Meru if he didn’t rally his friends Chin and Ozturk for one last crack at it. In 2011, they returned to Meru to ascend the Shark’s Fin.

What sets Meru apart from being a traditional hero tale is that it is mostly about failure. There is considerable care taken to show the profound psychological, emotional, and physical scars these three men carry with them, as well as frank assessments from their loved ones about living with these superhuman risks.

It may be tempting to think that, since Chin is the star and director, this is a vanity project chronicling his heroism. But Chin, along with Anker and Ozturk, are genuinely humble people. They have taken some devastating blows in their pursuit of impossible heights and deeply respect nature’s awesome power and the realities of human frailty. You can’t help but empathize with their struggles and personal losses and become deeply invested in their quest.

Equal parts edge-of-your-seat thriller and sensitive character study, Meru is more exciting than any big-budget blockbuster, and one of the more inspiring odes to the power of the human spirit.