Anodyne
Thursday, April 15, 2004
 
To Tinseltown late last night, for the 10:20 show of Touching the Void. Climber friends had praised the film for its accuracy. Accurate it was, and enjoyable too. A strange sense of deja vu in parts, the clink of gear on rocks or the clang of an ice axe's tip on moraine debris bringing back memories of my own climbs. Also accurate, the "oh shit" sensation of already being overextended and then encountering a new problem, eg., the Peruvian ridgecrest's steep little ice step, or the pleasant slope that suddenly turns vertical as the light runs out of the day. The bowl below the west face of Knight Peak, where I pushed through a thicket of mountain blueberry bushes, only to see, very clearly, the tops of the trees two or hundred feet below, swaying in the wind.

Accurate, too, the sense of being dwarfed by a big face, which in the film is accomplished by optical trickery that makes the face shimmer in and out of focus, like the air above a fire. This isn't visually accurate, but is totally psychically or emotionally accurate, the substitution of visual illusion for an unreconstructable mnemonic trace.
- posted by cjb @ 9:37 AM


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