Touching The Void

Year: 2003

Grade: B

Country: UK

Director: MacDonald

Review

pretty well done documentary about two climbers who have some trouble in the andes while on a climb. the strength of the human spirit and the endurance that are exhibited in this story shouldn’t really be the focus of any review of this film because both are greater than anything we are likely to ever face. that said, i’d like to say that shackleton’s expedition to the south pole was ten times more impressive than this story. watch “endurance” if you don’t believe me. onto the film…it uses reenactments and first hand accounts to retell the story and this is an interesting choice. it grants slightly less credence to the story because you always have in the back of your mind: “are these guys exaggerating their own exploits?” but they do come off as fairly candid so i didn’t worry about that too much. the other interesting result of telling the story in this way is that you know they’re both going to survive. usually a survival story has as its umbrella the question: “ARE these guys going to get out alive?” but in this film the overriding question was “HOW are they going to get out alive?” the reenactments are done rather well and there is some expressionistic direction towards the end which serves as a visual echo of the joe’s dementia. if you’re going to watch one “survival” documentary let it be endurance, if you’re going to watch two then watch this and then endurance.