Touching the Void (2003)

Kevin Macdonald's Touching the Void is an expert telling of an amazing true tale. While the story of mountain climbers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates is an incredibly dramatic true tale of death-defying adventure, and the film is absorbing, Touching the Void also gives a sense of missed opportunity. Macdonald's mix of interview footage and dramatic reenactment works very effectively. By focusing so intently on the minutiae of the moutaineers' harrowing ordeal (close-ups of picks going into ice and of climbers faces--stoic frozen masks of endurance), Macdonald gives the audience an almost tactile sense of the cold and the thirst and the pain the two men experienced in the beautifully alien Andean landscape. But it feels like there's an emotional component to the story that's missing. The film barely touches on who Simpson and Yates are as people, and the nature of their relationship. After the fact, Yates was widely criticized in mountaineering circles for his actions, which is the reason Simpson has given for writing his book, but Macdonald only notes this in a closing title. Macdonald is clearly interested in shaping documentary footage into exciting narrative structures. If One Day in September was a political thriller, Touching the Void could be seen as an action-adventure. It's an action-adventure, essentially, about a man crawling down a mountain, a few feet at a time. Macdonald, perhaps to keep up the pace, eschews much of the personal drama underpinning the survival tale. The film is never less than engrossing, but it does leave one wanting to know more. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide