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Review: Touching the Void
Jan. 20th, 2005 08:41 amThere's a point in "Touching the Void" when, confronted with the idea of attempting to manuver himself through a series of rock and boulder infested moraines, on a broken leg, with no crutch availible, having already survived events almost no one else would have survived, a mountain climber matter-a-factly states, "I knew I was going to fall down a lot, and I knew it was going to hurt."
It's no exagerration to say this is probably going down in history as one of the finest moments in British understatement.
It's not a spoiler either to state that the climber, British native Joe Simpson, survives his ordeal. He's telling you the story right on the screen, interspersed with dramatic re-inactments filmed in studio and on Peruvian mountainside where the original accident happened. He and a friend, in a moment of youthful stupidity, decided to climb together up the side of a previously unclimbed mountain, in "Alpine Style" with only the equipment they could carry on their backs and no reliance on base camps. Their starting point is a good two days from any sort of civilization, and if anything actaully went wrong they'd have no chance of rescue.
Things go, as Simpson says, "wildly wrong". He breaks his leg during their descent, and is left for dead by his friend under circumstances that could be politely described as "horrifying." The story of his survival is one of mountaineering legend. If it was a dramatic film, it would inevitably be panned for being too unbelievable. But it did happen, and aside from the actors portraying the two friends during their climb, it's done with a minimum of drama. The filmaker wisely allows the two men to tell their story in their own words, and that makes it more compelling than the most expensive Hollywood action flick, because throughout you're wondering "How in God's name is he going to get out of that?"
Rent it now.
It's no exagerration to say this is probably going down in history as one of the finest moments in British understatement.
It's not a spoiler either to state that the climber, British native Joe Simpson, survives his ordeal. He's telling you the story right on the screen, interspersed with dramatic re-inactments filmed in studio and on Peruvian mountainside where the original accident happened. He and a friend, in a moment of youthful stupidity, decided to climb together up the side of a previously unclimbed mountain, in "Alpine Style" with only the equipment they could carry on their backs and no reliance on base camps. Their starting point is a good two days from any sort of civilization, and if anything actaully went wrong they'd have no chance of rescue.
Things go, as Simpson says, "wildly wrong". He breaks his leg during their descent, and is left for dead by his friend under circumstances that could be politely described as "horrifying." The story of his survival is one of mountaineering legend. If it was a dramatic film, it would inevitably be panned for being too unbelievable. But it did happen, and aside from the actors portraying the two friends during their climb, it's done with a minimum of drama. The filmaker wisely allows the two men to tell their story in their own words, and that makes it more compelling than the most expensive Hollywood action flick, because throughout you're wondering "How in God's name is he going to get out of that?"
Rent it now.
