Yet is undeniably so. Jon Krakauer's book Into Thin Air cornered the market on mountain-climbs-gone-wrong to such an extent that my initial reaction to Touching the Void was exasperation, like there's no room in my life for another one of these tales. Yet come now, mountain climbers are not exactly the same as Kid 'N Play on the scale of outmoded cultural artifacts. And this story is so incredible, and the film so well made, that it manages to break your initial hesitance into small pieces, sending you cascading down a mountain of excitement in an avalanche of heart-pounding thrills. Hm, not sure why any sarcasm is needed, but there it is. Touching the Void is based on climber Joe Simpson's 1988 book recounting his 1985 attempt to climb the Siula Grande in Peru. After successfully ascending, Simpson and climbing partner Simon Yates (both then in their early 20s) encountered a series of mishaps, culminating in Simpson falling into a crevasse, hanging from the rope that tied the two together. Yates assumed incorrectly that Simpson must be dead or dying, so he cut the rope so as to save himself. Unbelievably, Simpson survived a fall that ought to have killed him, and through sheer force of will was able to struggle down the mountain, with a badly broken leg and almost completely dehydrated. The film intercuts first-person narration from Simpson and Yates with painfully meticulous reconstructions of their respective journeys back to base camp, resulting in a cool hybrid of straight documentary and dramatic re-enactment. Neither climber is romanticized at all; Yates clearly struggles with repressed guilt over his err in judgment in cutting the rope, and Simpson comes off as severely traumatized instead of heroic. So instead of the triumph of the human spirit, what emerges is simply a portrait of two lives forever changed by a single moment of youthful inexperience. Almost better than the film itself is a featurette on the DVD called Return to Siula Grande, which documents the film crew working with Simpson and Yates on the reconstructed segments, which are obviously miserable for the two to participate in, as they have no desire to revisit this place or the events they went through there. Worse, director Kevin Macdonald really pushes these guys, who are now in their 40s, to go for maximum accuracy … it's tantamount to bringing an Auschwitz survivor back and not just asking them to reflect on their surroundings upon returning, but actually making them strip down and get in the gas chamber. At the same time, it's hard to question Macdonald in this (despite the fact that he truly did not need to use Simpson or Yates for the footage, most of which wasn't even used), since what he's going for is not just a straightforward account of what happened, but also some insight into how it has shaped the lives of the men involved. Ultimately, Touching the Void ends in a haze of unanswered questions and lingering tension. What you'd assume would surely turn into a feel-good story of superhuman endurance simply trails off with the same begrudging tone of any real survival story. Yeah, they're happy to have lived, but the price was insanely high, and who knows if it was worth it?
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