OVP: Free Solo (2018)

Film: Free Solo (2018)
Stars: Alex Honnold
Director: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin
Oscar History: 1 nomination/1 win (Best Documentary Feature*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

I have a massive fear of heights, particularly high open spaces.  This is a weird conundrum for me, because since I was a little boy I also had a fascination with mountains and explorers.  I have a copy of a Life Magazine (one of those hardbound ones they sell at the Target checkouts) that profiles explorers from the past that became so worn through the years that when they re-released an anniversary addition I bought one just as an insurance policy.  So when Free Solo came out, I had a conundrum-do I see this movie which is apparently so intense as to make people actually upset while watching it due to their squeamishness about heights, or do I avoid it despite my love of adventuring?  Turns out my brother made that decision for me when he named it one of his best movies of the year (I always make a point of seeing all of my brother's favorite films of the year), and so on Wednesday night I went to it, fully ready to see the movie through cupped hands.  What I found was an awesome, awe-inspiring documentary that counts amongst the best I've ever had the privilege to witness, and if this movie is still playing at an iMax theater near you, do yourself a favor and get over your fears by catching the film.

(Do documentaries need spoiler alerts?) The movie is succinct (clocking in at exactly 100 minutes), and focuses on a single climber rather than a larger look at the art of solo-climbing: Alex Honnold.  A 33-year-old college dropout with a smile fit for a Neutrogena ad, Honnold is at first a strange choice upon which to center a documentary.  He has a ridiculously nonchalant attitude about pretty much everything, talking about his father's death with less emotion than he does how much he loves living in a van, and while he's easy-going, he's the sort of person you expect to be friends with and then he just forgets you exist.  This is highlighted in particular as we follow his relationship with girlfriend Sanni McClandess, who is not as closed-off as Alex about her emotions, and struggles to find a common ground with the man she's fallen in love with who seems incapable of telling her that he loves her (though he does at the very end of the movie, a moment that the documentarians wisely chose not to underline but it's there in its glory, ready for the narrative look at Honnold's life).

Chai & Chin's movie is successful because it finds even under Honnold's enigmatic exterior the soul of a man that is willing to give up his life with one slip of the rocks.  The movie ends with us knowing about as much about Honnold as we can, a man whose brain chemistry literally is different enough that he doesn't experience fear in the same way as an average person, likely allowing him to endure free solo climbing in this way.  They show the incredibly uncomfortable scene where he and Sanni are shopping for a house, and you can tell he's miserable giving himself over to change, only doing this because even though he can't say it, he loves her in his own way.  You wonder why she stays with him in these moments, rather than abandon him for a more conventional relationship, but there's something about Alex, and it's not just the big dick swagger he exudes or the fact that he's built like a Roman statue (the filmmakers go back to a scene of Alex shirtlessly doing pullups that feels weirdly reminiscent of Richard Gere doing situps in American Gigolo).  Alex is someone you feel, even as an audience member, you will remember forever because there's so few people like him. In a world where everyone is "special," he actually is.

This becomes clear when we get to the climbing sequences, which are mesmerizing.  It sort of staggers me that in a year where poorly-cut Bohemian Rhapsody and Vice somehow were nominated for Editing that Free Solo couldn't muster a similar citation, because there are moments where you watch this film and wonder not only how Alex can do this, but how could it be filmed this way?  The precision, dedication, and exactness of the camerawork is so meticulous it's easy to see this winning the Oscar in a week-any filmmaker will understand the stakes here, when literal lives are on the line.  The filmmakers even turn the cameras on themselves at one point, talking about how they don't want to pressure Alex to do this so that they have a movie, and wondering what sort of responsibility they'll have if he dies while they're filming.

But he doesn't die, and in one of the most mesmerizing 15 minutes I saw onscreen in the past year, he achieves his childhood dream of climbing El Capitan, the Holy Grail of free solo-climbing.  Even if you know how it's going to end, it's still jaw-dropping watching Alex meticulously climb the mountain, and you join in the documentarians who watch in horror as he ascends.  Alex, continually without fear, literally smiles and talks to the cameraman as he makes it to the very top, in a sequence where most of us would be screaming in abject horror.  It's filmed so well it's impossible to have cynical "what if he sneezes?" sorts of thoughts, instead just praying and watching a truly remarkable achievement of human endeavor.  I burst into tears as he ascended the summit, not realizing how invested I'd become in this mysterious man's shot at perfection.  Free Solo is the sort of movie that lifts your spirits, but also finds new ways to examine human achievement and our quest to find our place in the world, even if we can only find that place by going places none dare tread.