Filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin
FREE SOLO B+
USA (100 mi)
2018 d: Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi Official
Site
Imagine an
Olympic event where if you don’t get the gold medal, you die.
―Tommy Caldwell,
rock climber on free soloing
After filming his
own attempt in MERU (2015) to scale a 4000 foot wall on Meru Peak in the Indian
Himalayas, this Oscar winning film for best documentary examines the exploits
of rock climber extraordinaire Alex Honnold as he prepares for one of the extreme
accomplishments in mountaineering, ascending the face of Yosemite’s 3000
foot-high vertical rock wall known as El Capitain in 2017 without ropes or
climbing equipment, described as free soloing, where there is simply no margin
for error, with mounting pressure that you have to be perfect all the time, as
a simple mistake could cost him his life, like high-flying tightrope walkers
working without a net, yet his extensive preparations include meticulous
planning, making him the only climber to ever accomplish this feat, arguably
one of the greatest athletic achievements in human history. To capture it on film is even more daunting,
as initially it seems to put even added pressure on his attempt, even though
the members of the production crew are all rock climbers themselves, members of
an exclusive fraternity who more than anyone else understand the risks
involved. In this unique fellowship, the
Holy Grail of mountain faces is Yosemite’s El Capitan, which captures the
imagination of all rock climbers, remaining fixated in Alex’s head for eight
years before he decided to scale it without ropes, as he was drawn to the
ungodly possibilities, considered the greatest big-wall climbing route on
Earth, a massive granite formation that runs straight upwards, drawing
adventurous climbers every spring hoping to challenge the epic terrain,
featuring a degree of difficulty that’s hair-raising to flat-out insane, with
some sleeping on the mountain as it may take anywhere from three to five days
to make the climb. To do it in one day
is considered heroic. Alex’s climb was
over in less than four hours, quite simply a superhuman accomplishment. Most people free solo for a few hundred feet. What makes Alex different is his ability to
extend this to several thousand feet, where the degree of difficulty gets
outrageous. Not a single person on
camera in the climbing community supported Alex’s decision to climb ropeless,
none of his training partners, no one thought it was a good idea except Alex,
yet they all supported his decision, even though some couldn’t watch while it
was happening. Described as a wooden,
Mr. Spock figure who never allows his nerves to overwhelm him, seemingly
without fear, yet the recording of this event is both exhilarating and
nerve-wracking, with Alex displaying rare athletic abilities resembling
Spiderman where he literally walks up a seemingly flat rock surface, standing
on non-existent crevasses for support, yet his near mathematical preparation
allows him to anticipate each and every move ahead of time, like a champion
chess player, mapping out a strategy with fellow climber Tommy Caldwell,
identifying problem spots, where he’s able to rattle off his moves in a
lightning fast display of memory and mental precision. A college drop-out from Berkeley, Alex is
something of a social outcast, mostly avoiding relationships with people,
living a nomadic lifestyle alone out of his cramped van, which allows him to
easily travel from site to site. At a
book signing in Seattle for his own personal memoir Alone On the Wall, leading to an accompanying television short for
the program First Ascent, Episode 1 - Alone On The Wall on Vimeo
(23:51), he meets the ever cheerful Sanni McCandless, another seemingly
irrepressible force (claiming she is drawn to his ruthless honesty), though
she’s not a climber, and the two have been together ever since, sharing space
in that well-traveled van. This begs the
question whether she will have an influence in his mental preparation, and at
least initially this is answered by an otherwise inexplicable series of falls
that occur during practice sessions, something that hadn’t happened in
years.
Curiously, the only
acknowledged drone footage shown in the movie is Alex’s free solo climb of the
limestone cliffs of Taghia, Morocco in 2016, a test run which starts about 20
minutes into the film, as drones are not allowed in a national park, yet there
is aerial footage in the final ascent, which is either from a drone or a
helicopter, which could easily interfere in creating possible safety
hazards. All this is discussed ahead of
time by the filmmakers and camera crew, wondering what impact a film crew might
have on Alex’s climbing performance, with cameraman Cheyne Lempe asserting “The
worst possible scenario is that one of us would do something that would kill
him. Is it going to be the drone? Is it going to be one of the ropes? Is it going to be one of us accidentally
knocking off a rock?” In some of the
early practice runs, it seems clear that the camera is a distraction affecting
his mental outlook, as it’s simply an unnatural presence, something that
doesn’t belong in the otherwise completely natural experience of climbing
(later pushed further back so they’re not so intrusive). This aspect recalls Sean Penn’s Into the
Wild (2012), specifically the author of the book, Jon Krakauer, who is
himself a world-renowned mountaineer and rock climber, providing insight into
the mental outlook of supreme athletes who are also risk takers, flying off in
the blink of an eye to some faraway mountain ledge, taking on the challenge all
alone, where not another soul on earth even knows where you are, yet it becomes
a life or death battle that only matters to the climber, becoming an extreme
psychological battle of wills, a mano a mano endurance test that challenges
your mettle, where you take crazy chances just to survive, with many of these
daredevil heroics occuring in utter secrecy, with friends in the climbing
community only finding out about it afterwards, all of which goes into the
mentality of this kind of uniquely high-wired, super-charged sport. The guys attracted to this sort of death wish
are largely loners, already living on the fringes of society, where their
outlook is largely skewed by their isolation from mainstream society. Alex seems to fit that mold, cut off and
disconnected even from his own family, whose father died as a teenager, whose
mother, a French teacher that only spoke to him in French as a child,
acknowledges perceptively “I think when he’s free soloing is when he feels the
most alive, the most everything. How
could you even think about taking that away from somebody?” While still a distant presence in his life,
Alex has become something of a drifter, that is, until the arrival of Sanni
McCandless who constantly reminds him that he has something to live for. It comes as an awkward surprise when they
have one of these deeply personal discussions the day before he plans a solo
climb, a time that he needs to remove all distractions from his life and focus
solely on this single goal. Rising at 4
am, starting his ascent completely in the dark, he calls it off early on
without any real explanation, with the camera crew wondering if the nerves got
to him, but upon further reflection, one has to conclude he simply wasn’t
psychically prepared or fully invested, as things were still lingering in the
back of his mind, yet he had the strength and maturity to realize this before
disaster happened. The problem wasn’t
the mountain, it was other people, where he had to eliminate them from his
frame of mind.
Early on Alex reveals to us, “I will always choose climbing
over a lady,” yet his life is trending towards a relationship, including a girl
that exudes a warm, outgoing personality to balance his introverted
demeanor. “For Sanni, the point of life
is happiness,” he reveals. “For me, it’s performance.” Many will immediately conclude these are
misplaced priorities, but in doing so they will miss the singlemost
psychological ingredient needed to fully concentrate on the task at hand, and
that is emptying your brain of all unnecessary clutter in a Zen-like meditative
calm. It’s clear from the outset that
Alex isn’t like the rest of us. What
drives him is otherworldly, while what drives us is attending to more practical
matters, like showing up to work each day and attempting to be responsible
human beings. This film paints an
unusual portrait of living on the extremities, recalling another figure who fit
this profile, Philippe Petit in the James Marsh epic documentary Man On
Wire (2008), the tightrope walker who snuck into the South Tower of the
nearly completed World Trade Center with several hundred pounds of equipment
that he manually hauled up to the roof, or 104th floor, spent the night in
stealth mode, ingeniously strung a cable wire between the two Twin Towers (via
a bow and arrow) before performing a death-defying and utterly spectacular
tightrope walk without a net above the streets of Manhattan, a transcendent
human accomplishment that still staggers the mind. Like Alex, Philippe was euphoric during his
epic walk, an unstoppable force literally floating in the sky, reaching a
mental space that is unheard of, seemingly invincible, yet their rigorous
concentration is on full display, achieving an awe-inspiring perfection that
shatters all boundaries of human limitations.
This could easily have turned out differently, where we could be
mourning the loss of yet another human daredevil, like the first human
cannonball shot out of cannons, or plunging down Niagara Falls in a barrel,
where the pathetic aspect is that these foolhardy stunts are often done out of
a desperate need for money, or livestreamed thinking this will bring them
instant glory. Alex is surrounded by the
names of others in the extreme sport business who have come before him and
built stellar reputations, but nearly all have plunged to their deaths, where
he’s at the top of the list of who’s next.
While Alex may be viewed heroically, utterly enthralled by his manic
accomplishments, yet he also seems a tragic figure, remaining isolated and
disconnected from the whole, where the word “love” feels like a foreign
language. To his fellow climbers he is
viewed with reverence, as perhaps they alone understand the spectacular level
of risk he is toying with in his attempts to achieve the divine. Another thought that comes to mind is the
inherent trust the climber has with the rock surface itself, which he clings to
with his life on the line, where these cragged edges could easily crumble,
leaving him in a world of surprise.
Nature can be a fickle partner.
By accentuating Honnold’s heroics, however, does this film send the
wrong message? An open question remains
whether this film will inadvertently encourage more climbers to recklessly
abandon safety precautions and do more free soloing, especially considering all
the praise and adulation this film and this individual have received. One of his primary sponsors, Clif Bar,
dropped him out of fear that he was “taking the element of risk to a place
where we as a company are no longer willing to go.” Perhaps he’s an anomaly, as his skill level
is off the charts, having unique temperament, where his saving grace may be his
level of rational thought, as he believes in endless preparation, developing
mental confidence through thankless practice sessions that win him no
notoriety, yet the extreme degree to which he was meticulously prepared suggests
Alex may figure it out and find the right balance, where he can continue to
enjoy the sport (and happiness) without pushing himself over the edge.
