Free Solo (2019) - Movie Review

Free solo rock climbing. It’s one of those ideas where literally everything involved sounds like a bad idea. It takes the typical vertigo rush of rock climbing as is, and removes any semblance that it’s even remotely a safe thing to be doing. One slip, one all-too-tired muscle giving way, one grip that isn’t as secure as you thought it was, and gravity sends you out of this life. I mean, yeah, most physical exercise seems daring to me because I’m a lazy bastard, but doing shit like this feels like it was put into people’s heads just to weed out those who are stupid enough to risk it. Or, at least, that’s what I thought, until seeing this.

Chronicling rock climber Alex Honnold and his preparation to climb the nearly 3000-feet-tall El Capitan mountain, all without a rope or harness, this production is all too aware of the risks involved. Right from the first frame, the audience gets several eyefuls worth of just how perilous this activity is, and it only digs in deeper from there. The physical preparation, the mental preparation, working out the logistics of the path taken upwards, even factoring in the presence of a camera crew; for an activity that leaves zero room for error, directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin certainly show their working.

But what about the guy crazy enough to do it, Alex himself? Well, the depiction of his character is one of the typical thrill-seeker. For him, scaling that amount of earth without a safety net is the most important thing in his life. More so than his own life, more so than his relationship, more so than even being captured on film accomplishing something even his heroes wouldn’t dare try. It even gets to a point where he gets an MRI done, and it is revealed that his brain is wired so that it requires this level of stimulation to become engaged at all. Nothing short of the butt-puckering extreme.

It basically plays out like a horror movie, right down to the Marco Beltrami soundtrack, where the monster is nature itself. Or, more specifically, it’s the rush that man gains when it overcomes nature and the lengths it will go to do so. At every step, there lingers doubts in everyone involved that something could go wrong, and indeed, quite a few things go wrong in the lead-up to the big climb. But through it all, Alex persists, even pre-emptively scaling the rock face while still wearing a leg cast from his last attempt. It’s weirdly inspiring, seeing someone push himself so far that he does the rationally unthinkable, especially when we learn of free solo climbers who died from the fate that Alex is willingly putting himself at risk of.

And in a way, the emphasis on his truly remarkable will and intent to make this happen ends up highlighting why the camera crew, made up of fellow rock climbers, is as important as they are. In the age of ‘pics or it didn’t happen’, having record of people accomplishing such nightmarish feats is a vital thing to maintain. And yet, it is something that needed to be taken into account, since the presence of cameramen can also inspire being to push themselves too far just to look good. But Alex doesn’t care about looking good; he cares about feeling good, and nothing brings that rush quite like doing the impossible. Then again, those who say things can’t be done do best to stay out of the way of those actually doing them.