Free Solo **** (2018, Alex Honnold, Dierdre Wolownick, Tommy Caldwell, Jimmy Chin, Sanni McCandless) – Movie Review

Free Solo (2018) is an exhilarating, nail-biting, penetrating, revealing documentary on the weird life and times of rock climbing phenomenon Alex Honnold. It is nominated for one Oscar for Best Documentary Feature (for Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Evan Hayes, and Shannon Dill). It is also nominated for a BAFTA Film Award for Best Documentary. Regardless of whether it wins or not, it certainly is one of the best documentary features of the year.

After several setbacks, Alex coolly gets up from his caravan bed early one morning, goes out and becomes the first person to free solo climb Yosemite’s 3,000ft high El Capitan Wall without ropes or safety gear.

Jimmy Chin’s cameras are with him every step of the way as he completes one rock climbing’s greatest, craziest, most death-defyingly dangerous feats.

The fearless free climber does not need to tell us ‘There are many places where you can fall to your death’, for we can see that all too plainly in the film, which looks breathtaking on a big cinema screen. In up close and personal interviews before the big climb, Alex is very open and very revealing. He comes over as very likeable, and quite a charmer, with a good sense of humour, and a surprising hold on reality for someone who deals in the unreal. It is hard to compute his apparent death wish with the man we see being interviewed and getting on with the everyday details living his life.

His rather strained relations with his girlfriend, who met him on a book signing, are candidly and touchingly explored. She seems to want one thing, and he wants another. She wants to reform him of his free climbing obsession, but that is his sole reason for living.

Away from the personal and back on the rock face and climbing front, directors Chin and Vasarhelyi whip up a whole lot of sweaty-palm tension along the way to their immensely crowd-pleasing climax. The film has grossed $13,272,597 in US cinemas, which is good going for a documentary feature. The cinema is where it needs to be seen, with an audience, for full impact.

Free Solo went on to win both the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature and BAFTA Film Award for Best Documentary.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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