Films Worth Watching by Robert Alstead

The true story of how Joe Simpson and Simon Yates (played by Brendan Mackey and Nicholas Aaron) survived catastrophe in the Andes has become the stuff of mountaineering legend

Brit climber Joe Simpson’s best-selling account of how he survived catastrophe on a remote Andean mountain range has become the stuff of mountaineering lore. One of those books that you can’t put down.

Oscar - winning director Kevin Macdonald’s "drama documentary" is as compelling, capturing the taut excitement and moments of utter terror of this high altitude true-life drama.

The original three members of the expedition - Joe Simpson, his climbing buddy Simon Yates, and a trekker they met, Richard Hawking, who waited at the foot of the mountain, talk directly to the camera about their incredible experience. Intercut with their first-person accounts are dramatic recreations of the events.

Joe was 25 when he and Simon Yates set off in 1985 to do what no other climbers had done before them - scale the awesome west face of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. It was a staggeringly treacherous climb, but they were ambitious, fit and emboldened by an arrogant belief that they were better than those who had tried to climb it before them and failed.

The plan was to climb it Alpine style, which meant roped together with enough supplies in their rucksacks to do a quick ascent and descent. If anything went wrong, they were on their own.

"Christ it was big," recalls one with characteristic English understatement on seeing it for the first time. Worse was the type of snow: mountains of frosted powder which created "meringues and mushrooms and cornices all over the place" and made it difficult to find solid purchase for their ice axes and crampons.

They got to the top, but as Joe says, most accidents happen on descents.

Disaster struck when Joe fell badly, causing his lower leg to shoot up through his knee. Worse than the immediate physical agony was the knowledge that they would be lucky to get off the mountain alive.

Losing no time, Simon tied their two 300 foot ropes together and started belaying the pain stricken Joe down the mountain.

In spite of a freezing snowstorm, lowering light and the threat of dehydration (they didn’t even have enough fuel for melting snow to sit out the storm), they were making good progress. Then Joe, to his horror, found himself being lowered over a cliff edge. He shouted to Simon to stop, but it was in vain. Simon let out all the rope and waited for Joe to shift his weight so he could start lowering with the second rope. Joe dangled helplessly. After an hour and a half of being dragged toward the edge, Simon made the decision to cut the rope, causing Joe to plummet into a gaping crevasse.

It is fascinating to hear the almost matter-of-fact recollections of how the two men felt and behaved in these hostile conditions, with extreme choices and the prospect of dying at every turn.

Credit to Macdonald for doing the unorthodox in combining docudrama and documentary. It can be a turn-off, but here it works. The actors are so wrapped up that they are unidentifiable and close-up their bearded faces are so weathered by the hostile conditions they resemble slabs of raw, bristly meat. Simpson and Yates, who came along to advise on the shoot, appear in some of the long shots as themselves 20 years ago. You aren’t able to tell.

It also undoubtedly helped that Macdonald and a small cast and crew suffered broken lips, bleeding nails and freezing conditions, to shoot some vivid action sequences on location in the Andes.

But what really grips you from the start is the story itself, polished after many a telling no doubt, but all the same, totally compelling.

Robert Alstead runs movie, video and DVD ezine iofilm.com