Free Solo The Blockbuster Documentary

April 10, 2019

The first time I saw the footage of Alex Honnold climbing El Capitan with just his shoes and chalk bag 3,000 feet off the ground, my hands started sweating uncontrollably and I could hear my heart beating in my chest. This happened the second, third, and forth times as well. I was surprised by my reaction-I have been a rock climber for 8 years, climbing both indoors and outdoors. Apart from my experience, I had already known of Honnold’s ascent for a whole year. So why in the world was I completely petrified watching Honnold traverse an exposed edge of El Capitan?

My answer: amazing storytelling and cinematography. Jimmy Chin, a professional climber and director, along with his wife Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, a documentarian, directed the film with a beautiful mastery of storytelling and cinematography. The film had many wonderful moments of storytelling. The directors sought out several answers to big questions that often had moral implications given the nature of the ascent.

First, the cinematography is just simply beautiful. From up close shots of Honnold’s rubber shoe on a tiny shard of granite, to large sweeping bird’s eye views of Honnold climbing, a viewer gets to experience El Capitan from all angles. The film captures candid, intimate moments just as well, keeping emotion at the core of a film about a rather unemotional person.

Second, their approach to this film had high risk, for a number of reasons. For one, the cinematographers had to climb El Capitan with Honnold without getting in Honnold’s way or distracting him. Climbing El Cap, even when pulling on gear and using mostly ascenders to get up the wall, is a huge physical feat that already involves a ton of risk. Include ascending the wall at the breakneck pace Honnold climbs, hauling professional grade (expensive) cameras up the wall, managing hundreds of feet of rope, and dealing with the combined mental pressures of both trying to get usable, beautiful footage and suppressing the fear of watching your friend fall to his death, and you’ve got one heck of a day ahead of you. There is so much that hangs in the balance (quite literally), and any number of things could go horribly wrong.

One of the biggest risks, highlighted in the film, was the relationship between the documentary and Alex Honnold’s performance on El Cap. The filmmaker’s main concern was whether or not the act of filming Alex would cause him to act irrationally, potentially causing his death should he fall to the ground. This brought up further questions as well, such as whether they would continue filming if he were to fall, and whether they would complete the film.

Even more daring is that Chin and Vasarhelyi are close friends with Honnold, Chin in particular. It was very obvious throughout the film the distress Chin felt about his friend’s death. He demonstrated this distress through others as well, including highlights of friends who were deeply disturbed by the thought of Alex Honnold dying.

The risks Chin and Vasarhelyi take pay off beautifully, making this film a masterpiece. They pull you in with not only Honnold’s story of accomplishing perfection, but also their own story of personal turmoil. The documentarians usually seem to have a certain comfortability with discomfort, as they worked on Meru, a film about a team that ascended the mountain in spite of overwhelming deady odds. However, Chin and Vasarhelyi are very candid about how they feel, and this causes the audience to feel the same uncertainty of Honnold’s future, regardless of the knowledge that he did indeed survive.