My short summary review of Touching the Void and a list of links to other reviews of the film of the excellent Joe Simpson book, Touching the Void (amazon.com, amazon.co.uk)
A great film about friendship and being alone and the will to survive. It has superb photography, you really feel involved and the opening of the film is fantastic. It starts with sound of crampons and an ice axe on snow, plus the magical sound of climbing gear tinkling, see the trailer.
The style of the film is very suited to the book, a mixture of to camera interviews and climbing footage, then the long struggle from out of the crevasse and down the glacier.
Even if you have no ambition to climb a mountain, go see this film, it is really excellent and quite powerful, the reunion at the end is especially strong.
- Ed Douglas in Guardian Film
- Kevin MacDonald on making the film
- BBCi review of the film
- IMDB listing for the film with cast list (possibly one of the shortest at 4 people)
- The distributor Pathé have a small micro site for the film, with the trailer for the film
- Joe Simpson's personal website
- OutdoorsMagic article on the making of it
- In the January issue of the magazine Climber there is a 5-6 page article on the making of the film, focussing on an interview with Brian Hall, who acted as guide and extreme film-making consultant.
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