Free Solo

2018 mountain-climbing documentary

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A guy tries to climb a cliff with nothing but his hands and feet and some chalk.

They say that some members of Buster Keaton's film crew, when he was performing his most famous stunt in Steamboat Bill Jr., walked off the set and refused to film the thing. Others, I imagine, closed their eyes during that stunt. I was reminded of that when watching Alex Honnold climb up that giant rock in this documentary. Some camera operators articulated their mixed emotions prior to his attempts, and there were several shots of one who just couldn't watch.

Luckily, Honnold didn't tumble off the side of El Capitan to his death. I'm not sure if the movie would have been released if he had, and at the very least, it's likely most people going into a screening would already be aware that they're about to watch a documentary about a guy falling to his death while attempting something seemingly impossible. As far as I can tell, the footage of Honnold is presented in chronological order here, so you don't get any interview snippets that show he's alive and well after all this El Capitan business is finished with. However, likely due to the way it was advertised, I was fairly positive that this would not end in disaster.

Still, the climactic climb up El Capitan had my palms sweating and my head shaking and my butt clinching and my knees dancing and my jaw dropping and my mouth gasping. Franchise sequels, despite their effect-enhanced action sequences, sometimes suffer from losing tension because you know that certain characters are obviously going to survive. Even if you know Honnold is going to survive his own suicide attempts here, it's still gripping. What he's doing on the side of this rock just doesn't seem possible, and the shots from the film crew hanging off the side of the mountain or the drones really capture the idea that this is a human being who, if less than perfect on this particular day, is going to die.

It's hard not to admire the precision and hard physical and mental work that goes into an endeavor like this even if you think the guy is bonkers for even thinking about it. One of my favorite sequences has shots of Honnold studying or writing notes with his voiceover going over a sequence of moves. It's a staccato recitation of all these hand grips and swings and foot shifts and leg kicks, but it blends together as one ridiculous dance macabre, each one of those individual movements representing what just might be his very last movement. Unless you count flailing in midair while gravity conspires with the unforgiving ground to end his life as a last movement. Personally, I don't have the strength, the flexibility, the physical endurance, or the intestinal fortitude to even climb a wall with color chunks of plastic at a children's museum. I'm also slightly acrophobic. But I don't have the memory for this either. No matter how much I'd go up the side of El Capitan with ropes, I would still need a cheat sheet to remind me what little speck of rock I'm supposed to put my fingers or what itty-bitty crack I'm supposed to put a toe.

This is largely about Honnold's training and research and attempt to climb El Capitan, but his relationships are also really interesting. Stuff about his upbringing and parents sort of help explain him but are likely unnecessary. We watch a relationship with a girlfriend evolve, from the very beginning when Honnold hints that it might be something that turns into something to when it turns into something enough where the two buy a house together and pick out a refrigerator. The audience isn't in her head as much as Honnold's, but you still get a sense of what being in a relationship with a guy who does something this dangerous is like. Honnold has the type of personality--a little autistic perhaps, definitely on the spectrum--where he seems more out of place buying that refrigerator than climbing the side of a mountain. We also hear from fellow climbers and friends, one who seems to have reservations about helping him train for this whole thing while admitting he'd feel worse about it if he died when he didn't offer help.

I'm happy I saw this in a theater because it's never good to urinate on one's own furniture.