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“Have I mentioned to you that I have a significant fear of heights?” “Have I mentioned to you that I have a significant fear of heights?” When my editor assigned me to review this film, I wrote him a letter on this website. His deafening silence in response was eloquent, if not entirely clear in its meaning.
While watching “Free Solo,” a gripping documentary about Alex Honnold, a celebrated climber who rather frequently ascends cliff faces thousands of feet in height without the use of climbing equipment, I did not experience any vertigo. Only he, his hands and feet, and a small pouch hanging from his belt, which contains powder that dries his hands, allowing him to better grasp the rock face, are left in this world. When I was watching the film, I spent less time looking at the high vistas captured by directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, and more time looking at Honnold, who was hanging from an entirely vertical surface and asking, perhaps a little too loudly in the screening room, “Will you get off of there…?”
Honnold, who is now in his early thirties, is a fit, wiry fellow with a disarming smile who does not limit himself to free solo climbing as his primary activity. But he enjoys a good challenge, and he has regarded the formation known as El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park, as his own personal white whale, which he has been exploring for years. The film is as much about whether or not he wants his attempted ascent to be filmed as it is about his intense preparation for that attempted ascent, which takes place over several months. Honnold and filmmaker Chin discuss where the latter’s camera people—each of whom is a seasoned climber who is awestruck by Honnold—should be positioned in order to present the least amount of distraction for Honnold, creating an interesting Schrodinger’s Cat subtext that gathers around the film’s narrative. For the climber, the challenge is also a philosophical conundrum to be resolved. Everything he believes in leads him to believe that he is doing the climb solely for the existential achievement of completing the climb. Doing the climb while being observed by film cameras is a completely different matter, and one that he is extremely concerned about.
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I understand what you’re thinking: Is that what he’s having trouble with? Not by the prospect of scaling a spectacularly high rock face without the use of a rope, do you suppose?
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According to what you might have guessed, Honnold is a rather unusual individual. He was living in a van at the time of the film’s production. Despite the fact that it’s a van, it’s a pretty fancy van. Historical footage and narration depicts a childhood that was unusual but not too unusual, with the defining event being the discovery of climbing as a sport. His subsequent pursuit of the activity earned him notoriety as well as some money, which he has generously invested in a nonprofit organization that brings technology to impoverished areas of the world, which is commendable. However, in terms of a social life, it is not excessive. The film depicts him navigating his first seemingly sustainable romantic relationship, with Sanni McCandless, an adventurous young woman who, despite her concern for him, begins to have the impression that her concerns are causing him to lose his bearings.
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As for his own anxieties, he undergoes an MRI at one point in the film, which reveals that his amygdala—the part of the brain responsible for the fear impulse—doesn’t appear to be overly active. If there are any.
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If you’re going to have a non-functional amygdala, you might as well put it to good use, right? That is not to say that Honnold is a careless or reckless driver. For a free solo climb, it is necessary to have a thorough understanding of the surface you intend to climb. Honnold, after completing a number of roped climbs, fills notebooks with descriptions of specific “pitches” on the rock that he then memorizes, along with the moves required to navigate them.
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The film does an excellent job of demonstrating the mental and physical preparation and effort that is required. After all of that, Honnold’s first attempt at a climb was marred by doubt and a little bit of fear, which caused him to give up.
After watching him prepare for his second attempt, the viewer has a pretty good sense that he’s going to make it this time. This does not diminish the suspensefulness of the film’s magnificent final fifteen minutes, which are absolutely breathtaking. In fact, Chin and Vasarhelyi have done such an excellent job of laying out some of El Capitan’s specific challenges for the viewer that they have become resonant beats in a mini-story arc of their own. It’s both terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.
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