Honnold grapples with this as the story continues, but that doesn’t prevent him from walking to the base of El Capitan and starting to climb.Ĭhin and crew did a magical job of portraying his movement up the great stone. This is a depth and intimacy that we’ve never seen from the climbing superstar and it paints him as more human, more fragile than imagined.Īs he gets nears his goal, it becomes clear that the film is about these personal costs of pushing the limits of human potential. He’s unflinching in pursuing it and is clear about his commitment, often being callous toward her, yet over time, he softens. Over multiple interviews and candid conversations between the two, she’s communicative and clear-eyed about their relationship but she doesn’t fully understand Honnold’s drive to accomplish his very risky goal. The human side of Honnold is further revealed through his budding relationship with his girlfriend, Sanni McCandless. Is making a film worth it if your friend, the star, dies in front of you while you’re making it? This leads Chin, who’s been filming Honnold climbing for a decade and is a close friend, to question the project altogether. On his initial attempt, he gives up six pitches into the 31-pitch Freerider route, claiming that he didn’t feel comfortable with everyone watching. Chai Vasarhelyi, on the job.Īlthough Honnold insists that he’s still working on El Cap “for the right reasons,” the pressure of a film crew being there still gets to him. Croft is more reserved about his climbing and says that while he soloed the Rostrum (another famous Yosemite route) 50-60 times, he never succumbed to requests to film it because he felt like they were his own sacred, personal experiences, that filming would change the reasons to do it. Sitting in the van he lives in, Honnold chats with Peter Croft, one of the most prominent free soloists of the previous generation. Tommy Caldwell, a modern climbing legend and frequent climbing partner of Honnold’s, speaks most eloquently on the risk his buddy takes when doing these un-roped climbs, admitting that of his friends (of which he says he’s lost 30-40), Honnold is, “the most likely to die next.” Despite that, Caldwell helps him prepare for his groundbreaking climb, “because he’s going to do it anyway.” The film is gorgeous, with Chin’s top-notch rope skills and knowledge of Yosemite offering a detailed visual guide to the most famous chunk of rock on the planet, but what really makes the film vibrate with humanity are the honest and careful depictions of Honnold’s personal relationships. This film, however, takes the sport beyond itself and into the minds of the general public in a way that no other climbing movie ever has, tackling the heady subjects of death, drive, and happiness with care and finesse. Of course, Honnold’s free solo of El Cap in June of 2017 is mind-blowing and fantastical to rock climbers as it will stand as one of the sport’s greatest accomplishments ever. In that respect alone, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin have made the most compelling rock climbing documentary of all time. From the establishing shots of “Free Solo”-Alex Honnold climbing rope-less thousands of feet above the ground on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley-the drama is easy to understand: if Honnold falls off that rock, he dies.
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