Touching the Void
 | Directed by Kevin Macdonald Starring: Simon Yates, Joe Simpson, Brendan Mackey, Nicholas Aaron, Richard Hawking MGM (Video & DVD), 2003, DVD Customer Rating: 103 reviews Recommend |
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Joe Simpson and Simon Yates set out to climb the west face of the Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. It was 1985 and the men were young, fit, skilled climbers. The west face, remote and treacherous, had not been climbed before. Following a successful three-and-a-half-day ascent, disaster struck. Simpson fell a short distance and broke several bones in his leg. With no hope of rescue, the men decided to attempt descent together with Yates lowering Simpson 300 feet at a time in a slow, painful process that could have potentially been deadly for both. One further misstep led to Yates unknowingly lowering his injured partner over the lip of a crevasse. With the gradient having gone from steep to vertical, he was no longer able to hold on. Certain they were about to be pulled jointly to their deaths, the only choice was to cut the rope. How Simpson survived the fall, and made it back to base camp is a story that will astound and inspire. In Touching the Void, Yates and! Simpson return to t
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 Siula 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.
Based on Joe Simpson's gripping book, the film boasts glorious widescreen photography of Siula 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 reenact 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. — Mark Walker
Title: Touching the Void
Sales Rank: 5327 in DVD
Actor: Simon Yates, Joe Simpson, Brendan Mackey, Nicholas Aaron, Richard Hawking
Director: Kevin Macdonald
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD), 2004-06-15, Theatrical Release: 2003
Format: AC-3, Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC, Acpect Ratio 1.85:1
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled)
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Region Code: 1
Running Time: 106 minutes
Item Dimensions: 0.25 pounds
Package Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches, 0.2 pounds
- Some considerations to keep in mind!
- First of all, this is one of those rare productions where some 'Hollywood' version of true events [** you know, the old Hollywood classic of "for the sake of the script, viewer interest and so-termed 'creative license' ...] doesn't tinker with the facts or where countless Hollywood hawked "taken from true events" winds up taking a beating and pure… More reviews
- Excellent
- The simplest of words can sometimes convey far more than the most elaborate action scenes. This runs counter to the whole `a picture is worth a thousand words', yet is nonetheless true.
This film is a docudrama about two young British mountaineers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, who in 1985 decided to become the first men to ever scale a treacherous… More reviews
- True Spirt
- This movie is one that shows a real life story of a mountian climbing trip that leads one man to a struggle for his life. Touching the void conveys a the true feeling of strugle to the viewer. It offers a sense of how those with the those that can withstand the forging of ones soul in life will have the fortitude to make it through… More reviews
- Extremely Inspirational
- I'm reading a book right now about extreme athletes (Explorers of the Infinite by Maria Coffey) which led me to this movie. I was blown away, I haven't read Touching the Void the book yet, but this movie is well worth a viewing. Although I've never done mountaineering yet, I have gone 2 months without sleep before, and I can verify that… More reviews
- Amazing story, good documentary
- Perhaps the underlying true story already provides all the drama, but this documentary is true to the Simpson's book and shows a rare glimpse into the minds of the three key people.
Highly recommended, especially if you have read the book. More reviews
