Touching The Void

get Touching the Void

Year: 2003

Director: Kevin Macdonald

Writer: Joe Simpson (book)

Budget: ?

Domestic Gross: $4 581 222

i have heard it said many times that the most dangerous part of climbing a mountain is coming down.  Touching The Void is a film that puts that statement in its most harrowing context like no other film you have ever seen.

directed by kevin macdonald ,Touching The Void is a documentary based on the true life adventure of british mountain climbers joe simpson and simon yates in 1985 when they attempted to scale the never-before-conquered 21 000 foot siula grande mountains of peru.  they reached the summit no problem but on the way down things went very wrong.  i really don't want to give to much away, but to say that it all starts to go wrong when simpson shatters his leg and yates is eventually put in a situation where he is forced to make a life altering decision.  just thinking about it is making me anxious.  the events that follow that fateful decision are so incredible and scary and uplifting all at the same time they will make you believe like few other films in the power of the human spirit - i know that is one of those cheesy 'reviewer pull quotes' but in this case it is true.

the film is based on the novel written by simpson about that fateful climb and had been in circulation to be made into a feature film for years.  however no one could ever figure out how exactly to go about making it and i can see why.  so much of the story is about the inner monologue of these two characters and making it as a feature 'fiction' film would have lost all that and probably made for a pretty mediocre movie.

what macdonald did though, being a documentary film maker, he came at it from a documentary point of view and got it just right.  the film plays out with joe simpson and simon yates providing the commentary to their story while their adventure is being recreated by two actors.  i know it sounds a little sketchy - but these are not the corny re-enactments you see on dateline nbc or 48 hours.  this is a well shot film that has some great cinematography and creates a mood as good as any fictional mountain movie hollywood has put out. 

to listen to the actual participants tell you what happened and what was going on in their heads throughout the entire journey while you watch it unfold on the screen in front of you is the perfect way to make the story into a movie.  i can't imagine it any other way and once you see it neither will you. those of you looking to go on a true and gripping mountain adventure, forget about Cliffhanger or Vertical Limit and remember Touching The Void.

Comments

[Gary]

Let me start by saying that I'm a huge fan of Cable T.V.'s multiple learning channels. So when Jesse talked about/recomended this movie I was interested. And I liked it a lot. What propted me to write in though was a comment he made about how the movie had been bouncing around for a time while they tried to find a way to make a fictional narative type film out of the book before Kevin Macdonald made this documentry. I'm glad they didn't. One of the tenents of screenwriting they say is to alsways make your hero's opponent a person no a thing or a faceless enity. Or, more to the point, always put a face on the thing that stands in the way of yur hero gaining the thing he wants most. Sound advice yes. But in this case I think it would have been wrong. The thing these two men wanted most was to get down off the mountain safely. So the conflict is mostly with the mountain. How do you put a face on a mountain? Do you pit one climber against the other? Where one is more concerned with his safty than he is of his fellow climber and acts in his own best interest leaving the other to fend for himself? Easy to do if you know the story but it wouldn't have been entirely accurate. And required a substantial change in the ending. Add another climber. A fictional character to be the bad guy? If accuracy dosen't matter, then hell, why not just add a meglomaniac with a mountain top that opens up to conceal a giant laser that can destroy spaceships and is blackmailing the goverments of the world to pay him one hundred billion dollars or he's gonna use it and happens to find these two men on his mountain and is set on doing them in before they can tell anyone where his secret lair is...Where's Austin Powers when you need him. Anything they would have done would have cheapened the miraculous story of survial and will to live and tirumph of the human spirit in my opinion. I'm glad I got to see the real story instead because it was well worth the time spent.