To describe Touching the Void as a mountaineering documentary would be to do this breathtaking drama an injustice. By intercutting narration from the climbers themselves with a nail-biting reconstruction of their remarkable adventure in the Peruvian Andes, the film has the best of both genres: the authentic stamp of factual storytelling and the edge-of-the-seat tension of a dramatic movie.
In 1985, two British mountaineers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, embarked on a daring--arguably reckless in the extreme--attempt to climb the previously unconquered mountain Suila Grande. A mixture of overconfidence in their own abilities and underestimation of the climb's difficulties brought them to grief after the successful slog to the summit. What follows is an often harrowing account of their perilous descent, during which Joe horribly shatters his leg and Simon is forced to cut the support rope on which Joe's life, quite literally, is hanging by the proverbial thread. It's no secret that both climbers lived to tell the tale, but at every stage the audience will be left guessing just how the crippled Simpson could possibly have found the inner strength to surmount each deadly trial.
Based on Joe Simpson's gripping book, the film boasts glorious widescreen photography of Suila Grande and its notorious glacier. Actors take the place of the two climbers for close-ups, though Simpson did return to Peru in order to re-enact parts of his dreadful crawl back down the ice. The story of Simpson's almost superhuman fortitude has become legendary in climbing circles, and even for viewers uninterested in mountaineering, Touching the Void is an astonishing slice of real-life drama, magnificently retold.
On the DVD:Touching the Void is presented on disc in anamorphic widescreen, which makes the most of the glorious vistas, and Dolby 5.1 sound. The two extras are fairly short but both are invaluable appendices to the main feature: What Happened Next tells in their own words how the team made it back home; while Return to Suila Grande finds both Joe and Simon back at the mountain in the summer of 2002 to advise on the filming; emotions are mixed at best, as Simon seems unable to express his real feelings about the experience, and Joe finds himself painfully reliving the ordeal in his mind, as well as in front of the cameras. --Mark Walker
(90 votes)
2.
In 1985, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates set out to climb the 21,000 feet Siula Grande mountain in the Peruvian Andes—the only mountain in the Peruvian range that hadn't yet been conquered. They were young, fit, skilled climbers and were confident that they would succeed where others would fail. Their story has become part of mountaineering legend.
Simpson and Yates' method of climbing was Alpine Style—moving quickly up a mountain with the barest of supplies and no series of base camps. This approach left absolutely no room for error. Any problem they might encounter along the way would have extremely grave consequences.
Following a successful three and a half day ascent, disaster struck. Simpson fell and broke several bones in his right leg. His lower leg pushed through his knee joint, crippling him. At that altitude and in those remote conditions, this was effectively a death sentence.
With no food or water, severe dehydration and the ugly spectre of hypothermia before them, the climbers knew they had to get off the mountain—and fast. Yates was determined to find a way to get his friend home. They each had 150 feet of rope, which tied together so that Yates could lower Simpson down the mountain 300 feet at a time. The only complication was that Yates had to stop after each 150 feet and signal for Simpson to give him enough slack so that he could get the knot past his harness. Each drop down the mountain was agonizing for Simpson, but Yates had no choice but to ignore his partner's cries. Both of their lives were at stake.
Things were progressing unexpectedly well when Simpson failed to respond to Yates' signal. Unable to move any further and having no idea why Simpson was not pulling at the rope, Yates positioned himself against the mountain face and waited in the blinding storm. He held onto the rope with all of his strength, but was all too aware that eventually his muscles would fail him and both would plummet down the incline. What Yates couldn't know was that he had unknowingly lowered the injured Simpson over the edge of a crevasse. Simpson was hanging over the sheer vertical face of the mountain.
Joe remained suspended, unable to climb back up the rope with frostbitten fingers and unable to communicate with Simon above him. Simon hung onto the rope for an hour, with his strength ebbing away and Joe's weight on the rope slowly pulling him towards the edge of the cliff. Eventually Simon realized he was faced with an unthinkable dilemma: he could hang on to the rope until they were both pulled off the mountain.
Logic would say that it would be better for only one man to die rather than both. But the biggest taboo that any climber can commit is to cut the rope that binds you to your partner. For a climber, it is unthinkable.
Certain they would both soon be pulled to their deaths, Yates cut the rope… Based on Joe Simpson's international bestseller, "Touching the Void" combines dramatic and documentary techniques and is directed by Kevin Macdonald, the Academy Awardwinning director of "One Day in September."
From Oscar winning director Kevin Macdonald comes a riveting true story...a "gripping, white-knuckle" (The Village Voice) adventure culminating in "a cliffhanger...a real one" (Los Angeles Times)! After scaling the never-before-conquered 21,000-foot Siula Grande, mountain climbers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates face their greatest challenge yet: getting back down. But when Simpson shatters his leg in an awful fall and the friends are separated by a series of devastating mishaps, their individual journeys become a "voyage into an extreme experience that should not be missed" (New York Post)!
(75 votes)
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