Factoring in Mike Eley's breathtakingly vivid photography and a virtuoso sound mix that completely envelops the viewer, it's enough to make you never again want to poke your head into the freezer.

Kevin Macdonald has a terrific tale on his hands, and his telling of it, very British in its matter-of-factness, can barely be faulted; yet the facts drop away, and it becomes impossible not to read the movie symbolically--as a journey to the center of the earth, or farther still.

Uses first-person on-camera accounts of the adventure by Simpson and fellow climber Simon Yates to backdrop newly shot you-are-there footage that brings home the awesome and harrowing aspects of their feat.

Tells a tale of fortitude that comes not from muscle but from the ineffable, bungee-like sinew that is the human spirit.

The story itself is so powerful and troubling, the moral geometry so vertiginous, and the photography so big that anything other than the natural sounds of snowfall and footfall is a Flat Earth Society intrusion.