{"id":688,"date":"2004-11-22T15:08:15","date_gmt":"2004-11-22T19:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2004\/11\/22\/touching-the-void\/"},"modified":"2004-11-22T15:08:15","modified_gmt":"2004-11-22T19:08:15","slug":"touching-the-void","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2004\/11\/22\/touching-the-void\/","title":{"rendered":"Touching the Void"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

I just saw Touching the Void<\/EM> (imdb<\/A><\/FONT>)<\/FONT>again last night.  There are only six people in the film; Joe Simpson, Simon Yates, Richard Hawking, and their early-life doppelgangers.  <\/P>
\n

<\/FONT>It was every bit as riveting the second time through; and I appreciated the direct commentary<\/STRONG> from the climbers (now middle-aged and still climbing) a good deal more.  There is something about people robustly expressing their real thoughts and dreams – the thousand half-formed emotions<\/STRONG> that pass across their faces before they pick one idea to express and speak it aloud – which is more nuanced than the greatest matchup of director and actor.<\/P>
\n

Every time I turn around to check up on some part of Simpson’s life story, I find another one of his co-authors or fellow climbers being referred to as “late”; something like the world of private piloting, everyone who climbs professionally has a handful of friends who have died in the act.  Jono may have given up flying as a result, as Simpson finally has climbing (mainly due to the disintegration<\/STRONG> of the ankle on his good leg), but as Joe says early on, “if death weren’t involved, we wouldn’t be doing it.”<\/P>
\n

On the most devastating part of dying alone, aside from an eternity of Boney M<\/EM>‘s “brown girl in the ring”<\/FONT>:  <\/P>
\n


\n

Once right at the end I made a critical mistake, I believed they might still be there. When I called out and they weren’t, it was a devastating moment because I allowed myself a little bit of hope<\/EM>.<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n

Still hungry for more?  Here’s a quick post-film interview<\/A> with Joe <\/STRONG>Simpson.  <\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just saw Touching the Void (imdb)again last night.  There are only six people in the film; Joe Simpson, Simon Yates, Richard Hawking, and their early-life doppelgangers.  It was every bit as riveting the second time through; and I appreciated the direct commentary from the climbers (now middle-aged and still climbing) a good deal more.  […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[206],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-la-mod"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}