Touching the Void (2003)

Powerful

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Excellent but underrated film

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

This was excellent. I had read the book several years ago and honestly didn't have high hopes for this as a docudrama (expecting it to be cheaply done with cheesy re-enactments) but that couldn't be farther from the truth. I was on the edge of my seat throughout and left exhausted and kinda traumatized by the end. The climbing scenes are incredibly well done, with excellent action scenes, the shots of the snow, the crevices, the vertical-idity. The mix of them telling the events interview style and the impressive reenacted scenes also works well here.The story is excruciatingly tense throughout even though you know the outcome as both Simon Yates and Joe Simpson are telling the story. Yes you know they make it off the mountain, but wow. The journey. Just incredible.Joe Simpson and Simon Yates tell their story interview style with the movie flicking back and forth between them describing events and how they felt and a really well done recreation with actors. It traces their 1985 Andes expedition and the perilous journey they made up the west face of Siula Grande. Having successfully reached the summit, tragedy struck on their descent when Simpson fell and broke his leg.Yates attempts to lower his friend down the mountain, but bad weather and increasingly desperate circumstances eventually lead him to cut the rope holding his friend. After surviving a fall into a deep crevasse, Simpson was able to climb and crawl his way down to the base camp despite having a badly broken leg and not eating for several days.My fear of heights kicked in immediately here, the climbing scenes are super well done -these guys are crazy. My claustrophobia also kicked in during the crevice incident where this truly became a horror movie Yes this movie left me traumatized and emotionally exhausted. 7/7/15

This movie keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire time. It's very tense even though the outcome is already known.This movie details the true story of a mountaineering expedition gone horribly wrong. It shows the 2 climbers struggling to make it back down as more and more things go wrong.Even though we already know the ending, the movie is still quite the thrill ride. It keeps us on the edge of our seats the entire time. It is very gripping and the movie draws the viewer into the action immensely.The great acting, facial expressions, sound and music, editing, and set design only makes the tension bigger and it immerses the viewer even more.This is a movie that you have to experience. It's hard to watch at times due to the graphic nature of some of its scenes but it's truly an amazing film which keeps the viewer engaged from beginning to end. It's a must watch for all fans of the genre.

I've seen quite a lot of films and generally like all genre. So I don't mind watching a documentary every now and then. And I never review any title before as most of the time, most existing reviews are more or less conforms to what I think of about a particular film. But after watching Touching the Void, I feel really compelled to say a word or two. It is by far the best docudrama I've ever seen.As a film, it is near-perfect. The way they shoot some scenes was very effective especially during the climbing and their descent before the broken leg tragedy. At times, I kind of forget that it was all re-enactment of the events narrated by the legendary mountaineers.Despite knowing that both of them survived at the end, some scenes were really heartbreaking. The film effectively shows the state of utter hopelessness in Joe's struggle for survival. One can only imagine what he'd been through after falling down into an ice crevice, with a broken leg, extremely dehydrated while already exhausted both physically and mentally - basically lost in a middle of nowhere with very low chance of survival. And as someone who has been through some kind of utter hopelessness situation myself, at least mentally, I can totally relate on a certain level.And despite the overwhelming odds, he never stopped struggling and kept going and hoping, knowing full well that he and only he himself will be able to get him out of there. And as the story goes on, you can't help but be dragged along through his painful struggle from the way he climbed out of the crevice, dragging himself slowly off the huge icy area and to the excruciatingly painful scenes of repeated falling downs in the rocky area.And finally to his rather humorous and yet quite creepy and sad state of mental breakdown with the Boney M song after yet again faced with hopeless situation that will be the end of him, so it seems. And it was expected of someone who has gone through such perilous ordeal. For me, he really did, in a sense, touched the void.And in the end, you can't help but cheer and be happy for him and at the same time relieved as he did finally found by his friends, and survived to tell this heroic survival story.This film is one of the very few out there that truly shows the amazing capability of human body and mind for survival. For many, it seems almost superhuman and considered impossible given the odds and circumstances.And I don't know how they do the effects, if any, but the state of the actors after been through such ordeal was very real, from the extremely dehydrated facial skins, their expressions and the blacked fingers due to frostbites.Overall, this docudrama is near-perfect in my opinion. In term of film that portrays the human struggle to survive, it is the BEST I've ever seen. I'm so glad to finally seen it after been able to get my hands on it very recently. Rated 9/10!

Touching the Void is a lot like Masayuki Suo's Shall We Dance. That's right, I said it.Where Shall We Dance is supposedly a romantic comedy about dancing, it proves itself to be a wonderful and layered comment on Japanese life (If you've been there - you get it) with obvious jabs at the office job and trappings of married life.Touching the Void equally on the surface, is a docu-drama about a mountain climbing disaster. Yeah, not really. Kevin McDonald's glacial disaster epic trumps Titanic and most BBC nature documentaries on what it means for a living thing to survive. It is expertly re-enacted and edited with excellent testimony from Joe Simpson, Simon Yates and Richard Hawking. This is one of the best films I have ever seen. Profound questions, metaphors and parallels from one's life flash by when viewing the gut wrenching choices each man in this story was forced to confront. For Simon, how does one cope with losing something you are attached to. How do you cut loose and move forward to survive? When do you pack up and move on?For Joe, when do you give up? How do you get up after a fall? What drives a living thing to survive at the most atomic level?Like life, the success of Touching the Void largely depends on how much you invest and bring to it. In the end, you really want to weep or cheer. Joe wins, but it feels as if we did too. I didn't need Celine Dion to tell me that - Bony M did just fine.