Imagine you’re playing a sport in the Olympics, and if you don’t play it at the level you need to absolutely win the gold medal, you die. That’s what people described Alex Honnald’s life as in the Academy Award-winning documentary directed by Jimmy Chin. The documentary follows the journey of Alex Honnold as he trains to climb El Capitan, a 3,000-foot mountain, without any ropes or equipment to save him from death. Titled after the term for rock climbing without any protection, Free Solo (2018) captures one of the most impressive physical feats of our time.
While the physical feats Honnald attempts are impressive, it’d be criminal not to take note of how these feats were filmed. To film many of the scenes of him climbing, a team of cinematographers climbed up the mountain with camera equipment (on a rope as well), and recorded Honnald climbing while on the wall themselves. To my surprise, the documentary actually goes fairly in-depth with how they filmed it, and they make it known exactly why. Honnald, as well as everybody involved in creating this film, was aware of how having a film team recording him on the wall could affect his psyche. Many of the crew actually described how they all collectively had moral doubts about being a part of this film, worried that their presence could play a role in Honnald possibly falling to his death. In addition to these climbing cinematographers, the film team also used drones to record him, as well as a helicopter with a 1000 mm lens. Still, even with the breathtaking footage of him on the wall, the classic documentary interview scenes are still there, where it shows not just what Honnald thinks of himself, but also what other people close to him think.
The actual detail we see describing Honnald’s process of climbing is incredible. Scenes of him pouring over journals describing every minute detail of his climb were near jaw dropping. Watching him do pullups on doorframes or his insane stretches really gave us some context as to how physically fit he was, even though he often described himself as needing more fitness to climb. Watching the last parts of it, scaling this mountain with nothing on him but clothes and chalk is, to be honest, terrifying. Watching a documentary and feeling like you’re watching Mission Impossible is a surreal experience. Then, at the very end, you see the moment of triumph, him getting to the top, feeling like you climbed with him. At most, you’ll have commentary of him describing his movements, or you might have very slight instrumental music. This felt like one of the more purposeful actions in the film, as many scenes were meant to emphasize the sounds of him on the wall, so other sounds were kept as quiet or unnoticeable as possible. No music with lyrics, or anything in particular that would make you recognize it. As I was watching it, there were many times I felt like a balloon was about to pop, or a pin was about to drop, even if there were a million sounds in my ears, then, it still would’ve felt silent from the tension.
To the climbing community, nothing like this had ever been done before, or even attempted since. As a climber myself, I’ve heard people describe him as some sort of god that transcended reality. Even compared to other impressive feats from different sports, it might be hard to compare anything to what Alex Honnold did. This might’ve been a big reason as to why somebody decided to film this and make a documentary about it, because it was so impressive that it would’ve been wrong to not have a record of it.
Personally, I loved this documentary. It’s rare that you find a documentary interesting or visually attractive, but Free Solo had both. While capturing the impossible on camera, it also shows us incredible landscapes of Yosemite National Park from thousands of feet up. While it definitely highlighted the big impressive feat he accomplished, I still find it impressive how they also highlight the many little details of his big feat. This was one of the most worthwhile documentaries I’ve ever watched, but at the very least, I enjoyed this far more than I would’ve watching a random rom-com or superhero movie.
