When you think New Year's Day, you think resolutions. You think fresh
starts, more bad television and turkey carcass. You can't help but think
of that hangover...
Interesting idea, then, for me and my soon-to-be housemate to trek down to Liverpool's excellent, and now mercifully properly open, FACT centre to watch a film. Our choice was between the apparently classy Hollywood epic, Cold Mountain, or the Filmfour-financed dramatised documentary Touching The Void, about a remarkable mountaineering expedition. We went to the latter because it was on later and I'd remembered hearing Joe Simpson, one of the climbers, on the radio sounding vaguely interesting.
In retrospect, though, I have to say I'd be surprised if Cold Mountain was remotely as gripping; TTV was incredible.
The true story is the stuff of mountaineering legend; two young determined British climbers make a rather gung-ho attempt at climbing a rock face in the Andes - the Suila Grande - which no-one else has ever succeeded in doing. They do it, but then things go tits-up on the descent culminating in one of the most dramatic rescue/survival situations ever.
If you think I'm blowing the story, I'm not; this much is spelt out early on in the film and the fact that the two leading protagonists (plus the dim friend they'd picked up along the way and who tent-sat their base camp while the climbers went on their 'nice day out') themselves narrate all the way through means you are in no doubt that they had survived... it's how they did it, and the descriptive and visually stunning way their plight is presented, that makes it such a memorable film.
If you've ever seriously injured your leg, you can understand why, when Simpson describes the injury he sustained on the descent and which triggered the chain of remarkable events that unfold during the film, you are forced to physically recoil and clasp your face in your hands. And why every subsequent inch of movement the actor playing him enacts makes you go 'ouch' under your breath.
This is a film which takes you back there, takes you up there, takes you in there with them. It really is extraordinary.
Alan, 18/01/2004