After shooting in the Andes and Alps last year, the action drama of Touching The Void is starting to generate advance publicity already. Sounds good.
The forthcoming film of Joe Simpson's Andean epic, Touching The
Void, gets a name check in today's Guardian Arts section as part of a
new wave of feature-length documentaries hitting the big screen some
time soon.
Simpson seems to have flogged the film rights to his mega-selling
book countless times, most notably to pint-sized Hollywood star Tom
Cruise's production company, a move which notoriously resulted in a
screen play where the two climbers were connected with walkie
talkies... Doh...
Refreshingly though, the latest FilmFour version, which is
actually happening and directed by Oscar-winning Director Kevin
Macdonald, is a straight, action-adventure documentary that attempts
to reconstruct what happens with extensive involvement from both Joe
Simpson and Simon Yates.
The term 'documentary' might suggest 'dull', but in the G2
article, Macdonal is quoted as saying that he's deliberately aimed
for spectacle. "It's very consciously made as a cinema film.' He
says. 'It's big and dramatic, full of extraordinary locations, people
hanging off the top of mountains, that sort of thing.'
Sounds like it could actually be the holy grail: a dramatic,
visually stunning mountaineering film that's not riddled with
Hollywood absurdities, dynamited crevasses and the like.
A number of British companies were closely involved in the making
of the film including Berghaus, who provided shell jackets identical
to those which Joe and Simon were actually wearing in Peru.
In fact there's a four-page feature in the latest Berghaus
brochure - just out, you can order a copy from the Berghaus
web site - written by Dave 'Cubby' Cuthbertson who stunt doubled
for Simpson during the filming in Peru last summer. Cubby also had
the unenviable task of recreating the infamous knife-cut fall in the
Alps, where more climbing was shot.
Well worth a read, particularly the account of his gut-churning,
double-take, knife-assisted fall off a huge serac...
The film was shot last year, details of when it's actually in the
cinemas as soon as we have them.
