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You may already know the story of mountain climbers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates and their trip up the west face of Peru’s Siula Grande back in 1985. I was just a kid then, and was still a kid when Simpson wrote his book about the experience in 1988. But I do remember hearing him interviewed on the radio when Touching the Void premiered at TIFF in September of 2003, and having my mind blown just a little bit.

The story is basically this: two young men want to become the first to successfully scale Siula Grande. They make their way up the mountain in the Alpine style of climbing, which essentially means that they have only what they carry with them. They don’t set up camps with supplies at various points along the route, which means they have nowhere to retreat to except base camp, at the bottom of the mountain.

Remember the nursery rhyme, “Hickory, Dickory, Dock”? Their story isn’t unlike that. Everything is going swimmingly, and then the mountain strikes one, and the other comes down, thinking he has left a dead friend behind. But he is mistaken. The friend hasn’t died. And he is now very much alone.

If you already know the story, you know it isn’t a tragedy in the end. Joe Simpson and Simon Yates themselves narrate the film via interviews that are intercut with dramatic recreations of the events on the mountain. Richard Hawking, a casual acquaintance who agreed to hold down the fort at the base camp while Simpson and Yates climbed the mountain, offers his perspective as the fellow who had to wait in the valley.

The drama of the movie isn’t whether or not they survive.

It is the actual, practical fact of survival—the execution of survival.

Touching the Void is incredibly beautiful (and occasionally agonizing) to watch. The crew, accompanied by Simpson and Yates, travelled to Siula Grande to shoot the landscapes, coverage, and long shot recreations of the climbers’ movements (in which Simpson and Yates are, effectively, their own body doubles). The close-ups and scenes with actors were filmed in the Alps, but that scenery and cinematography is no less remarkable than in the rest of the film.

Most importantly, though, there is a stark absence of sentimentality in the movie. There is no orchestra swelling when Joe is found alive, nor is there howling at the sky or fist-shaking or any trace of overwrought triumph-of-the-human-spirit nonsense. There is a single, crystallized moment of emotion when Joe recalls the feeling of being held when he is found by his friends in the dark. That’s as good as it gets. This isn’t Hollywood. It isn’t even Hollywood claiming not to be Hollywood. This is just a movie about the way it went down.

As much as I regret never seeing this on a big screen, there are several reasons to love the DVD. Among the special features you’ll find two key documentaries. In What Happened Next, the interviews with Hawking, Simpson, and Yates continue to describe the journey out of base camp and back to England. It’s horrible. I understand Kevin Macdonald’s decision to end the film where he did, but the last part of the journey is no less interesting than the first (though perhaps that’s only true because of what has preceded it). It seems almost like a sick joke.

Then there’s the feature entitled Return to Siula Grande, which is a documentary about the film crew, accompanied by Simpson and Yates, returning to Peru to recreate the events of 1985. If Simpson hasn’t already broken your heart, he will here. And Yates, whose nonchalant honesty throughout the film’s narration is startling at times, manages to break your heart a little bit, too, by choosing not to make his mind and heart public domain. The documentary is telling in ways the film can’t be about the true impact of what happened on the mountain, and shines a light on how goofy it is to try to slap some meaningfulness on it if you’re anyone other than the three people who were involved. The feature seems to undermine the film in a way that I’m still working out. But I have a lot of respect for Macdonald for including it on the DVD, and if I hadn’t already maxed out my admiration for Simpson, then his candour in his video diary surely would have put me over the edge.

I don’t know anyone who has been tested like Joe Simpson was, but I understand people being tested in a whole new way as a result of this film. His is the kind of story that makes you question your own mettle, and wonder at the possibility that there is no such thing as an impossible situation. After I watched the movie, I fell asleep wondering what I would say to Simpson if I met him. It occurred to me that I probably wouldn’t say anything, because the only thing I’d be able to think to say would be ‘I’m glad you’re alive,’ and that’s a pretty creepy thing to say to a stranger. But it’s entirely true, because the simple fact of him being alive means that there is always, always, always a little hope. And that seems to me like a pretty awesome gift to give the world. Cheers, Joe.