I was seventeen when Patty Hearst was kidnapped. It was a sensational story that I followed like everyone else in the country. But my parents weren’t readers and neither was I at the time. So my version of the story came solely from the nightly news. This film gives a much more complete picture of what took place.
Touching the Void tells the true story of two climbers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, who set out to climb one of the highest mountain peaks in Peru — the Siula Grande. The documentary is based on the book written by Joe Simpson.
Normally this is the place where I review documentary films, but since I took part in this documentary I don’t want to appear as a self promoter. Having said that, you should definitely see this documentary. The producer, Caroline Sommers, was asked to do a documentary on the Hudson ditching. She decided instead to do a documentary on the subject of ditchings. Besides the USAir 1549 ditching, the documentary covers the 1956 ditching of a PanAm Clipper, the 1996 ditching of an Ethiopian Boeing 767 off the coast of Africa, and the ditching I wrote about in my book 35 Miles From Shorethe 1970 ditching of ALM 980.
The film touches on a number of important topics: The industrialization of food, inhumane treatment of animals, overuse of corn, health risks of meat factories, environmental impact of food production, lack of government oversight, obesity, organic food, genetically engineered seeds. There is so much to cover that no one topic gets the thorough examination that it deserves. The filmmakers spend even less time on discussing possible solutions. Note to some enterprising producer: there is enough material here for a four or five part series.
This film is similar to what you might find on the Discovery Channel or National Geographic. It is perhaps a few notches above the typical documentary found on those channels thanks to some stunning visuals and an imaginative sound track.
This documentary is the first of two documentaries dealing with the early days of the cocaine trade. I actually saw the Cocaine Cowboys II documentary first. That film led me to this one. The two films work together because they cover different time periods. The second film is a natural extension of the first and includes some of the same characters.