Fall into the void

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Fall into the void
Original title Touching The Void
Country of production Great Britain
original language English
Publishing year 2003
length 102 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Kevin Macdonald
script Joe Simpson (book)
production John Smithson
music Alex Heffes
camera Mike Eley
cut Justine Wright
occupation

Sturz ins Void (Original title: Touching The Void ) is a British docudrama from 2003. Directed by Kevin Macdonald . It is based on the 1988 book of the same name by Joe Simpson . The film was released on April 22, 2004 in Switzerland, a week later in Germany and on August 20, 2004 in Austria.

action

overview

The Siula Grande (second from right)
Fall into the void (South America)
BlackMountain.svg
Location of the Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes (South America)
Fall into the void (Peru)
BlackMountain.svg
Location of the Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes (Peru)

It tells the dramatic story of British mountaineers Joe Simpson (25) and Simon Yates (21), who climbed Siula Grande in June 1985 , a 6344  m high mountain in the Peruvian Andes . They were the first to climb the western flank. While descending from the mountain top, Simpson had an accident in a snow storm, where he suffered several fractures in his right leg. Yates tried to rappel him down on it. In a desperate situation, however, he had to cut the rope to the Simpson hanging below him. This fell into a deep crevasse and Yates was sure that he had found death. Simpson, however, found a way out and was able to crawl back over glaciers and scree to the camp, where he was found by Yates and a companion.

In particular, Simpson's struggle for survival is portrayed in the film - but it is not shown that he was finally taken to a hospital and survived.

In detail

On their way to Siula Grande, Simpson and Yates meet the British globetrotter Richard Hawking in the Peruvian capital, Lima . Although he is not a mountaineer, he accompanies you to the base camp , which you set up below the snow line at an altitude of around 4500  m , where you watch over the tents.

The mountaineers want to climb the Siula Grande in alpine style, that is, without storage depots , but in one go to the summit. At first everything went perfectly, after the first day you got further than expected, although the rock face is more difficult and steeper than expected. On the second day they get even higher. It is getting colder and stormier and they are fighting with avalanches. On the third day, the two reach the summit.

Then the descent begins. Simpson and Yates want to go down the north ridge that same day. But the snow on the ridge is very deep and the two are making slow progress. Simon falls unexpectedly due to a fracture of the cornea , but is held by the climbing rope and remains uninjured. Then they decide to descend again at another point via the western flank. Joe falls to a height of around 5800  m and breaks his right leg and knee. His lower leg bones are pushed through the knee joint into the thigh. When pressure is applied from below, the thigh splits off and Joe loses a lot of blood.

Now Simon rappels down the injured Joe over the western flank of the Siula Grande in an almost hopeless one-man rescue operation. This happens without self-locking because the powder snow is loose and you cannot use ice screws . As a safeguard against falling and so that each other can then abseil down, they dig a “seat” in the loose snow, which does not last long or starts to slide. You take two 9 mm ropes, each 45 m long, and knot them together. Joe is then let down the mountain. When the knot on Simon's carabiner is in place, he disengages the rope, with Joe trying to secure himself as well as possible in the rock wall, and unhooks the rope so that it can be attached again with the knot below the safety rope. Then he can let Joe down a pitch again. Simon lets his partner down quickly because he knows they have to come down as quickly as possible to avoid freezing to death. Nevertheless, they suffer from frostbite and they can no longer prepare warm meals because their gas supply has run out. During the abseiling process, Joe repeatedly hits his leg and suffers enormous pain. They also fight with small avalanches and storms.

It is agreed that Joe takes his weight off the climbing rope after each abseil section so that Simon can put the rope around his neck. When Joe falls over a ledge on the fifth day and hangs in the air on the rope a few meters away from the rock face, he can no longer do so. He lacks the strength to pull himself up with frozen fingers and he cannot reach the wall with the ice ax . Simpson is hanging on the rope in fear of death for a sign or Yates to be pulled up and further up Yates waits for a sign or Simpson to climb up. Both shout to each other, but due to the constant storm they cannot hear each other.

Simon waits for more than an hour, gradually sliding deeper and deeper in his “seat”. When his strength waned, he decided to cut the rope with a pocket knife . Joe crashes and falls many meters into a crevasse about 10 m wide .

Simon assumes that Joe could not have survived this fall. After another nightly bivouac , which he climbs through on the rock face in a small snow cave he made , he walks over the glacier back to the base camp and meets the camp keeper Richard there again. The next day they burn Joe's clothing as a farewell ceremony because they assume that he did not survive.

After his fall into the crevasse, Joe is still alive - without food and water. When he realizes that Simon is no longer there, he almost despairs. He tries to climb out of the hole he fell through. When he fails, he decides to rappel down. With only one resilient leg, this turns out to be a difficult undertaking. But Joe finds an exit and after many hours he can free himself from the crack. He is now on the crevasse glacier and crawls with difficulty towards the base camp, trying to follow Simon's downward footsteps, provided that they are not snowed in. When he arrives at the glacier tongue , after leaving most of his equipment behind, he tortures himself crawling and stumbling over the rubble mountains of the moraines and past the banks of a mountain lake below.

Joe is afraid that Simon and Richard may have already left base camp. When he ran out of strength, Brown Girl in the Ring by Boney M boomed in his ears for a long time , originally a Jamaican nursery rhyme. In the film he says he hates this song and doesn't want to die for it.

So Joe pulls himself up, crawls until shortly before the base camp at night and on the seventh day remains exhausted in the latrine area there. He calls for Simon several times in the middle of the night, who hears and finally finds him. With Richard he brings Joe into the tent, where they provide him with food and give him makeshift medical care.

The next day, the three adventurers start the two-day journey with Joe lashed to a mule , which is touched on in the film credits. The subsequent drive to Lima, where the seriously injured Joe is taken to a hospital, cannot be seen in the film.

background

  • Joe Simpson was operated on six times in the following two years and was able to climb again afterwards. He suffered three other life-threatening climbing accidents. In one of these accidents in the Himalayas , he broke his second leg. In 2003 he reported in another book about his difficulties and about quitting climbing.
  • Simon Yates suffered mentally from the experience for many years. He has also received allegations from other mountaineers, including allegations that he tried to kill Simpson. Simpson took Yates under protection and also published a magazine article. By the time the book came out, the controversy was settled.
  • The landscape shots in the film were filmed on Siula Grande in Peru, the close-ups in the French Alps .
  • The comments in the film were spoken by the climbers themselves, but the scenes were recreated by Brendan Mackey (as Joe Simpson) and Nicholas Aaron (as Simon Yates).
  • Another film, Touching the Void: Return to Siula Grande , which was released in 2004 and is 24 minutes long, describes the return of both climbers to Siula Grande, which was necessary for the filming of the film Fall Into the Void .

reception

Reviews

“Dramatic docudrama based on a true story, the text of which is spoken by the alpinists involved in the original plot. Although the film does not build up tension in the classical sense, it captivates with breathtaking landscape shots and insights into the human soul. "

- film service

“[…] Fall into the Void mixes interview sequences in which Joe and Simon tell their story. In between the film diary in which actors re-enact the events. It was shot in Peru and in the French Alps. Although the viewer knows that Joe will survive in the end, the cinema film literally gets under your skin. Joe bluntly shares his feelings and thoughts in the moments when he thought he was dying. It is understandable that he did not want to die alone. However, only extreme athletes understand why he moved back to the mountains after six operations. "

- Thomas Maiwald : Filmhai.de

"Re-enacted with actors in feature film quality, the docudrama impresses with bold stunts and a visual directness that makes the pain palpable."

- Heiko Rauber : Kino.de

Awards

literature

  1. ↑ Fall into the void. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed July 30, 2018 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  2. ↑ Film review at filmhai.de
  3. ↑ Film review at kino.de
  4. ↑ International Mountain Film Festival Tegernsee, jury evaluation - winner 2004 ( Memento of the original from November 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on September 8, 2012; PDF; 20 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bergfilm-festival-tegernsee.de