Follow Alex Honnold as he becomes the first person to ever free solo climb Yosemite’s 3,000ft high El Capitan Wall. With no ropes or safety gear, he completed arguably the greatest feat in rock climbing history.
Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s “Meru” was one of my favorite documentaries of 2015. The tale of a few long-time friends/mountain climbers resonated on several levels: it was a masterful, highly intense adventure story and a deeply affecting character study, beautifully shot and told with a welcome simplicity. The filmmakers’ follow up is no different. “Free Solo”’s title refers to the insane act of climbing a massive cliff without any harnesses or ropes, but it’s also a glimpse inside the life of a loner, living solo, off-the-grid, freed from his demons by challenging death. It’s told with a minimum of embellishments, and yet so much is revealed.
For one, Chin and Vasarhelyi never rely on archival footage or music cues, or any of the dozen other staples so prevalent in documentaries. A few sentences about his childhood as an outcast, coupled with a shot of him cooking vegetables in his tiny RV, speaks volumes about the film’s protagonist, free solo climber Alex Honnold. And while the main focus may lie in the gripping lead-up to the grand, rope-less ascent of Yosemite’s 3,000ft-high El Capitan Wall, the parts involving Alex’s complicated relationship with girlfriend Sanni and her love for the man who will always choose climbing over women are equally affecting.
The most powerful aspect of the doc, however, is the prevailing fear that we are witnessing someone’s final journey. Climbing without any safety gear is possibly the most dangerous act of defiance, next to Russian roulette and Timothy Caldwell’s bear adventures in Herzog’s “Grizzly Man.” By watching such an act, do the filmmakers – and we, the audience – become participants in Alex’s potential grisly demise? A rare, stunning archival shot shows a free solo climber miss a ledge and plummet down… luckily he had a parachute. Alex doesn’t. Chin addresses those issues, along with the camera crew being a distraction to Alex, and yet Alex’s small amygdala – which allegedly makes his social anxiety so severe and his yearn for high-stake adventure so robust – drives him to a stunning finale.
“Free Solo” is a story of true perseverance, of overcoming your fears and past. It’s a story of a flawed but gentle man who has found his passion and will never abandon it. Alex Honnold’s journey, both intimate and epic, pins you to the seat more effectively than Tom Cruise’s shenanigans in the “Mission Impossible” franchise; it’s more effortlessly inspirational than a dozen Dan Fogelman films; and, unlike that other “Solo” flick, it has a complex protagonist who wrestles the most frightening enemy of all – the mind – with just the tips of his toes and fingers, without so much as picking up a lightsaber.
In theaters Friday, September 28th
