t its most basic, Touching the Void is a story about survival. Again and again, the movie’s heroes find themselves in stunningly grim situations that by all reason and common sense ought to kill them. True, they fight and struggle, go slightly insane, and endure unimaginable pain. But in the end, instead of dying, they live. That may seem like an oversimplification: “Surely, there’s more to it than that?” But really, the movie’s unflinching insistence on boiling it down to this central point is its greatest asset.

Touching the Void is a documentary that tells the tale of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, two cocky, young, British mountain climbers who unwisely attempt to tackle the daunting face of Siula Grande, a scary, snowy, pointy mountain, deep in the Peruvian Andes. The narrative couldn’t be more straightforward—they climb up and then they come down. Of course, in the case of Siula Grand that’s never been done before, so we can assume that it might not be especially easy.

This is a pure film; there are no distractions to dilute the experience. The film takes the elements of your typical story arc—introduction, rising action, conflict, resolution—and comes at them with a sharp lancet, delicately paring it down, slicing off chunks of the unnecessary. The build-up is basically limited to about five minutes, and the conclusion measures the same. The rest of the movie is excellent; it’s brutal, thrilling, and chock full of dread.

In the way that driver’s ed films are made to convince sixteen year olds that if and when they get behind the wheel of a car, they will inevitably die a horrible, fiery death, this part of the film—the middle eight tenths, let’s say—seems aimed at scaring the bejesus out of any moviegoers who themselves might be considering an afternoon hike on the Siula Grande. Quickly, the climbers get most of the way up the mountain. It seems easy. But, inevitable disaster looms and just as quickly, the “they-really-should-be-dead-by-now” trope, in the form of storms, cold, and avalanches, starts to kick in. As a sort of false reprieve, they make it to the summit, where we get beautiful scenery, a sweeping camera, and high fives. But having gotten that out of the way, it’s downhill (literally) from there. As the descent commences their prospects grow exponentially worse.

Of course, no one dies. After all, the story is narrated by the two main characters who, talking to the camera, seem in perfect health, cozy and comfortable. You might imagine a crackling fire and a mug of rich hot chocolate just off screen. The inspiring conclusion is, in essence, revealed at the beginning in the very structure of the film. Somehow, though, this spoiler remains beside the point. The sheer drama of the climbers’ situation maintains a pervasive feeling of loathing and claustrophobia. Early in the descent Simpson breaks his leg, making any movement an act of self-torture. When the two become separated, each is convinced the other dead or dying. That we know they survive becomes irrelevant, as a new and equally agonizing question takes our focus. It never was: Do they make it? It is instead: How do they make it?

This is a work of history, an after-the-fact documentary. After the two Brits returned from the brink, they told their story in a popular book. Now, we get the film version. That means lots of obligatory talking head shots. Both climbers offer a welcome dose of British understatement that shies away from melodrama and keeps the movie grounded. Stuck hundreds of feet below the mountain’s surface in an icy crevasse, doomed to almost certain death, Simpson simply says, “It was lonely.”

If this were a Ken Burns production, in addition to the main players we’d get experts and slow panning shots of well-worn photographs and journal entries. What we see instead is reenactment. Most of the film is made up of new footage, some filmed on the original mountain, some filmed in the Alps, with two actors/climbers reliving the experience as told by the survivors themselves. Occasionally, such an approach risks mimicking the tone of productions like Rescue 911, that schlocky, Shatner-narrated, my-daughter-fell-into-a-well, seminal piece of reality television programming from the early ‘90s. But fortunately, more often than not, the sequences are strikingly realistic, with precise, unassuming camera work. Frequently, the artifice melts away, leaving us conscious of only the unfurling thrill of the climbers’ plight.

Ultimately, Touching the Void is the kind of movie that Ernest Hemingway would surely have enjoyed. Not only is it a testosterone-fueled tale of strong men doing battle against the dark unforgiving forces of nature and fate, it also captures an unspoken, elliptical reverence for the big picture. Only a handful of times do our narrators mention faith or the cosmos, and even then it’s often as an afterthought, an analytical footnote.

By not drawing any big connections or loading the tale with heavy allusions to a moral underpinning or lessons learned, we are left to inject our own judgments and draw our own conclusions. This is what happened; this is how it happened. Now explain its significance as you wish.