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Touching the Void
review by
Elias Savada, 23 January 2004
So, maybe you read the 1988
international bestseller Touching the Void by Joe Simpson,
the heart-rending true-life tale of the near death experience he and
fellow mountain climber Simon Yates experienced atop the
21,000-foot, extremely isolated Siula Grande peak in the Peruvian
Andres. And maybe a few of you remember reading that Sally Fields'
Disney-based production company Fogwood Films and Castle Rock's Alan
Greisman optioned the book back in 1997 as a possible Tom Cruise
vehicle (with a believable British accent?), where after the project
went into turnaround (i.e., Hollywood limbo-land, where it should
stay) as of September 2000. And even fewer of you have actually
climbed a mountain. Touching the Void will make you think
hard about taking a big walk up the wild side of any stack of rock
as daunting as that shown here.
But, damn, until
you witness the bone-crushing, blue-lipped, ice-encrusted treatment
within which Academy Award-winning director Kevin Macdonald (One
Day in September) has framed this fiercely entertaining dramatic
documentary, you have no idea how exciting and emotionally draining
the resulting cinematic climb up and particularly down can possibly
be. You will envision their terror, again, that engulfed both
Simpson and Yates, maybe not as the nominally interviewed talking
heads explaining their action (kept to a educational minimum), but
rather as they are seamlessly re-enacted by Brendan Mackay (Simpson)
and Nicholas Aaron (Yates). Macdonald tensely reconstructs the
incredible 1985 climb up and agonizing descent with an
edge-of-your-seat urgency that makes you root for their lives and
enduring spirit as if your own existence depended on it. Your
fingernails will be bitten down to their cuticles--by the person
sitting next to you. If you've seen hundreds of E! Entertainment
simulated retellings via this Mysteries & Scandals or that True
Hollywood Story, you may think you know what Touching the Void
might be like as a viewing experience. But you can add up all the
impact those shows may have had on your coach potato life and it
will pale in comparison to the 106 minutes you spend frozen to your
seat watching this engrossing struggle of two human beings over the
crushing forces of nature that bear down on them.
So, the two
Brits, having ascended a three-and-a-half day climb up the west face
of the Siula Grande, with unseen cinéma verité cameramen
trekking right beside them, find their climb down a worst case
episode of mission impossible, as Simpson misses a step and his
lower leg is driven into his kneecap. Unable to walk, crippled in
pain, and the weather outside far from delightful--its night time,
blistery cold, and you can't see the nose in front of your face--the
trip home won't be a walk in the park. There's also no food or
water, and dehydration is settling in. Simpson's leg, and
confidence, is shattered. When the climbers (and the audience)
should be home in a warm bed or cuddled up near a warm fire, instead
we're all shivering together, much to the credit of Mike Eley, as
director of photography, and Keith Partridge and Simon Wagen for
their "climbing photography." And then, as they say, is when the
agonizing story really begins.
Combining their
separate segments of rope, Yates begins lowering his companion
downward in the darkness, 300 feet at a time. The seemingly steady
progress is broken when Simpson basically falls of the mountain,
dangling in the freezing air and unable to signal his friend.
Presuming the worst (it's hard not to under these harsh
circumstances), the rope is cut and each climber is left to his own
inner strength to remove himself off the frozen landscape and out of
their hellish nightmare: Yates on the snowcapped exterior, Simpson
from within the mountain's icebound caverns. I doubt that anyone
watching the film with me took a breath during these tense,
gut-wrenching moments when both men brush up against their own
mortality.
Using the actual
mountain (briefly, when weather conditions allowed), but generally
filming in the Alps, the expedition still proves treacherous to any
climber, especially one followed by a film crew that has to deal
with its own fiascos, such as frozen cameras, fogged lenses, and
just general safety issues when your shooting a film at twenty below
zero. To those hardy individuals and rugged individualists (you have
to admire them for their sheer lunacy who explore (and film) the
tops of the world at threat to their life and limb, Touching the
Void is the quintessential document to these dedicated sportsmen
and, in the case of those that have now climbed to that highest
mountain in the sky, a fitting memorial.
Fear Factor.
Survivor. Move over, you minor league adventurers. You want
compelling? Climb up to Touching the Void. |
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