WeatherGirl and I just finished watching Touching the void, and I’m completely and utterly wrung out. Even though we know they all live (they’re narrating the story for us), it was still one of the most tense and powerful stories I’ve seen in a long time.
The short version is that two companions (Joe Simpson and Simon Yates) are the first people to climb the west face of a high peak (Siula Grande) in the Peruvian Andes but, as all too often happens (see Krakauer’s excellent Into Thin Air, originally started as an essay for Outside Magazine), it all goes pear shaped on the way down.
Horrifically, Joe shatters his leg as they’re struggling to get down, which is but the first of a long series of amazingly wrenching events. The most oft told is Simon’s eventual, and brutally necessary, decision to cut the rope, believing he was dropping Joe to his death. In many ways, however, this is only one (albeit important) piece of a very complex web of events, all of which come together to bring them both off the mountain alive.
Absolutely gripping stuff, and more than enough to convince me to stay in my armchair (if Krakauer’s book wasn’t enough, which frankly it was).
The book (by Simpson) that this is based on (along with interviews with the participants which form a significant and powerful part of the film) is also an interesting example in the Wired piece on “The long tail” (which I definitely recommend). Simpson’s book was apparently nearly out of print, when word of mouth attached to Krakauer’s book on things like Amazon (“If you like this you might also like…”) brought it back from dead and into a huge seller.
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