Review of Touching the Void

A facinating and gut wrenching true story.

After climbing the snow covered Siula Grande in Peru. Simon and Joe begin descent. After breaking his leg, Joe is lowered down the moutain by a rope attatched to Simon. However Joe falls over a cliff and is left dangling, too heavy for Simon to lift..to far from the floor or mountain side to get grounded. After hours, Simon decides to cut the rope and continue descent alone.

After an amazing fall, onto a cavern ledge. Joe must make is back alone and seriously injured. This is a documentary of those events.

The bravery and endurance shown by Joe is beyond astounding. Left crawling for days on his belly over snow and fragile ice sheets. The reconstruction is done well, epic scenes and sweeping camera work makes the whole thing feel like an adventure movie. Now and then these scenes are punctuated with the recollections of real life Joe and Simon; and you are pulled back to the shocking realisation that it is all real.

It is an amazing story of survival, which encaptivated me; although I will say, its a one view only kind of film. I tried to watch it again and was utterly bored, this is the problem with films that rely on shock...view it once and its lost its pull.


7/10