Movie Review: Touching the Void

This is the true story of two Englishmen, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, who attempted to be the first climbers to conquer the 21,000-foot high Siula Grande mountain in the Peruvian Andes. Both men are interviewed while authentic reenactments are interspersed throughout their recollections. Backpacker Richard Hawking, who they met in Peru, is also interviewed. During the climb, he stayed at the base camp.

The events of their ordeal happened over the course of one week. The ascent took three and a half days. No base camps were created along the way. Instead they chose to dig out shelters in the snow for their overnight stays. Traveling lightly, they only had enough supplies to get up and back down quickly. There was no room for errors; nevertheless, their descent became gravely difficult. Joe fell and landed on a slope. The impact of which drove his lower right leg up through his knee joint. Joe illustrated how the bones pushed past each other, intercut with a dramatization that included bone-crunching sound effects and “Joe” screaming in agony.

Once Simon learned how dire Joe’s predicament was, he tied their two 150-foot ropes together and lowered Joe down 150 feet at a time. As Joe descended, he banged along the mountainside, screaming in pain, but there was no other alternative. After sliding 300 feet, Joe tugged on the rope, letting Simon know that he was secure. Simon then made his way down to Joe and started the process all over.

There were many reasons that Siula Grande had remained unconquered up to this point and one of the dangers was about to become evident. During their descent, Joe was lowered off of a precipice. He dangled in the air helplessly, trying to get a hold of the cliff face but couldn’t reach it. Simon continued to wait for a sign from Joe even though the wind blew hard, the sun was setting, and his footing was giving way. As darkness came he eventually decided to cut the rope. Simon knew that he was probably killing Joe with this action, but it was the only way to save his own life. Simon dug out a snow shelter to survive the frigid night and made his way back to the base camp in the morning. He told Richard how Joe had died during their descent.

Article Author: El Bicho

El Bicho writes for a number of movie web sites, including Cinema Sentries, which he runs for the geniuses of Forwerd Media. He also occasionally cleans up around here. Follow at twitter.com/ElBicho_CS

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