Two-thousand feet above the base where El Capitan grows vertically out of the ground, there waits The Boulder Problem. Attached to the mountain by merely a toe and a thumb, the thrill-seeker in question must find their way to a ledge to the left roughly a yardstick away. There are two ways of getting there: one involves a “karate kick” move that places your left foot 90 degrees away from your body onto rock and grabbing the hold immeditely above your left foot. The other involves jumping for it. Two-thousand feet above ground. And remember you’re probably not full of piss and vinegar or any other condiment at said point in the climb; if you reach this section, you’ve almost certainly been hoisting yourself vertically for hours already. An expert climber with safety harnesses and several partners attached to ropes would find this a daunting task. How about a climber who chances it without rope, harness, or partner? There is nothing between the Free Solo artist and ground besides a few millimeters of worn t-shirt.
Neither a Star Wars film, nor a new version of computer solitaire, Free Solo is a documentary about a man who felt the need to scale the world’s most difficult climb without anything but a camera team present to capture the insanity.
There’s a morbid game my friends like to play online. It’s called the Celebrity Death Pool, in which you ID celebrities you think might die within the upcoming year; the younger the correctly predicted celebrity, the more points you get. Ladies and gentlemen, I present a perennial first rounder in the Celebrity Death Pool game, Alex Honnold. All it takes is one critical mistake to cash in on this van-dwelling sub-40 year-old. He doesn’t even seem to feel the pressure of his climbs; that’s probably what makes him the best.
Alex freely admits his humble past. In the documentary, he talks about living in a Wal-mart parking lot and spending 88 cents on dinner every night. At the beginning of the film, he is still living in a van. He is still eating out of cans. He still is combining his rare showers with laundry day. His climbing celebrity has changed all that; now he adds fresh kale to his canned dinner. In all seriousness, Alex’s climbing notoriety hasn’t made him rich, exactly, but he estimates he now has the income of, say, a successful dentist. And like most successful dentists, Alex still lives in a van most of the time.
At the start of the film, Alex flat out says, “my climbing comes before my girlfriend,” which is pretty much what every woman wants to hear. I suppose it’s not historically uncommon for women to take backseats to celebrity men, but I’m thinking Coretta Scott King found it a tad more tolerable when MLK, Jr. was giving a speech about freedom than, say, playing ultimate frisbee. As the film works its way up to the summit of the big climb, Sanni McCandless becomes more and more a part of Alex’s life. They seem happy, sorta. Part of this is a filmmaker clearly more interested in climbing, but they strike me as one of those “Amazing Race” couples where their language of adoration is guarded and, lo and behold, the couple is happy at The Louvre, but in civil war at The Parthenon. We don’t see Sanni and Alex fight, but we know damn well that Alex is very limited emotionally (it’s part of his climbing gift package) and Sanni doesn’t handle pressure well. Alas. Well, good luck, you two!
One of the fun realizations of Free Solo is the understanding that director Jimmy Chin has to be an expert climber in his own right. You can’t have an intimate, technical film of a guy going up El Capitan by himself without having some strategically placed cameras. And how do you think the cameras got there? “I’m just
gonna hang out in valley and shoot from a mile away the whole time; how does that sound?” We are not introduced to the other director, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, but my guess is this person is probably an accomplished climber as well.
The biggest problem with Free Solo is the wait. There’s only so much of Alex I can take without dozing off. I respect his skill level; I respect his athleticism, his toes as strong and deft as those of any ballet dancer, his fingers are capable of winning arm-wrestling contests by their own. The depth of his personality, however, is the exact opposite of the heights he climbs. Like The Walk, we the audience are all simply waiting for the climax. Except even The Walk had greater intrigue in getting there. The climax is magnificent … and not for the faint of heart. It’s enough to recommend the film, but I wouldn’t go further than that unless you are a climbing fanatic.
♪You say I’m gonna need to catch my breath
If I go too fast, I’ll plummet to my death
(Just give up) ‘Fraid I just can’t lump it
(Hang ‘em up) Ascending to that summit
I’ll hang on
To that big rock
Won’t let go, my fingers lock
Got a lot of room below me
Look down, look down, look down,
Ain’t that a shock♫
Rated PG-13, 100 Minutes
Director: Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Writer: Gravity
Genre: The innate desire of man to accomplish reckless, self-serving goals
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Climbers
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Acrophobics
♪ Parody Inspired by “Let’s Hang On”
