Touching the Void (2003)
Directed by Kevin Macdonald
The true story of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates' disastrous and nearly-fatal mountain climb of 6,344m Siula Grande in the Cordillera Huayhuash in the Peruvian Andes in 1985.
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What critics compared Touching the Void to
With roots in everything from Jack London’s 1908 short story “To Build a Fire” to the 2003 nonfiction film “Touching the Void” and the recent ordeal of the Chilean miners, “127 Hours” is a real-life cautionary tale for anyone not respectful of all the dirty tricks Mother Nature can play.
Brief, punchy and powerful, 127 Hours has more than a passing similarity with the excellent 2003 documentary Touching the Void - about two men whose trip to the Andes goes bad - and will make you feel the tension, anxiety and anger Ralston went through.
A lot of movies about climbing ‒ I’m thinking “Touching the Void” and “North Face” ‒ are about men who get into trouble by pushing their luck.
Is it a uniquely powerful experience or a "Johnny-come-lately" after the metaphysical survivalist films Touching the Void and Into the Wild?
Aron wanted to be interviewed a bit like in “Touching the Void”.
The thought of climbing perilous icy peaks might not sound like most people’s idea of a good time, but watching brave men and women take on such challenges has led to some truly great films like Kevin Macdonald’s Touching the Void and the recent doc Meru.
The best ones are typically documentaries, such as Touching the Void (2003) and the recent Meru, in which the climbers explain their motivations in their own words.
Instead, it's a close cousin to sci-fi stories like Moon , Gravity , and Interstellar and deals with some of the same themes and ideas as Cast Away and Touching the Void .
We go for years without a great survival movie a la “Cast Away” or “Touching the Void,” and suddenly we have two at the same time (“Gravity” is the other).
It isn’t even really about the triumph of the human spirit in quite the same way that “Touching the Void” or, again, “127 Hours” are.
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That said, Frozen isn't exactly Touching the Void, and there are more than a few plausibility issues, especially when you try to get your head around three young people going out on the slopes without one of them having a cell phone or PDA. Green barely addresses this, and there's nothing to make us assume this story takes place in the '70s or '80s or anything.