Free Solo

Alex Hon­nold is caught between a rock and a hard-on. He’s prepar­ing to climb an egre­gious, 900-metre gran­ite wall in Yosemite Nation­al Park, but his spoil-sport girl­friend, San­ni McCan­d­less, won’t stop being emo­tion­al­ly invest­ed in his health, safe­ty and well­be­ing. Or so goes the remit of Free Solo, a dizzy­ing doc­u­men­tary about Honnold’s quest to become the first per­son to ever climb El Cap­i­tan sans safe­ty gear. It’s a sto­ry of phys­i­cal strength, emo­tion­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty (or a lack there­of) and the irra­tional exploits of humans hell-bent on con­quer­ing the exis­ten­tial futil­i­ty of being.

When Free Solo starts, van life has been work­ing out fine for Hon­nold, a thir­tysome­thing world trav­eller who looks like a ripped Nathan Field­er, and lives off canned chilli and chalk dust. Ear­ly on, film­mak­ers Eliz­a­beth Chai Vasarhe­lyi and Jim­my Chin posit that such an adven­tur­ous life is anti­thet­i­cal to hav­ing a girl­friend, nev­er mind their subject’s rusty social skills or unwa­ver­ing self-absorp­tion (syn­ony­mous here with Olympic-lev­el determination).

As the film unfolds, Honnold’s two com­pet­ing quests – achiev­ing excep­tion­al ath­leti­cism and bare-min­i­mum boyfriend points – seem to be mutu­al­ly exclu­sive for the pro­tag­o­nist, the film­mak­ers and their col­lec­tive friends. They’re all too ready to blame McCan­d­less for their hero’s recent spate of injuries, as he trains for an act that has, in fact, killed many of their kin­dred climbers. Free Solo has no short­age of ver­tig­i­nous scares, as Hon­nold and his under­ac­tive amyg­dala scale rock faces in North Amer­i­ca and Moroc­co. Nat­u­ral­ly, the cin­e­matog­ra­phy is breath­tak­ing, with due cred­it to the film’s eight rock climb­ing cam­era operators.

Record­ing also cre­ates an intrigu­ing con­flict: could the crew’s pres­ence be the true cat­a­lyst for Honnold’s angst? What’s the point of film­ing this feat if, becom­ing cog­nisant of a cam­era, our sub­ject los­es his foothold? At the pin­na­cle of nar­ra­tive ten­sion, with Hon­nold halfway up El Cap­i­tan, a drone-mount­ed cam­era leaves the man behind, and ris­es up to reveal the envi­ron­men­tal splen­dour and ter­ror that envel­op him. As the dire pos­si­bil­i­ties of one mis­placed fin­ger sink in, Honnold’s lone red t‑shirt dis­ap­pears from view, a blip in the his­to­ry of civil­i­sa­tion. Yet still he clings.

Crit­i­cal and audi­ence respons­es to Free Solo have referred to Honnold’s desire as ​‘uni­ver­sal’ and his deed exem­plary of the ​‘human spir­it’. This homogenis­es the man­i­fold pas­sions and objec­tives of humankind, and pre­sumes every per­son walk­ing Earth wants to assert pow­er and posi­tion over the land­scape. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, this impulse has been exer­cised pri­mar­i­ly by priv­i­leged white men (El Cap­i­tan itself was dubbed such by Cal­i­forn­ian mili­tia fight­ing Native Amer­i­cans dur­ing the Gold Rush). Honnold’s sto­ry is no exception.

His per­for­mance of mas­culin­i­ty joins a time-hon­oured canon in which men stake their claim on sim­i­lar ter­ri­to­ry. So what does it mean to root for a guy who can stare death in the eye, but can’t hold a tape mea­sure to help his girl­friend fur­bish their first house togeth­er? Who lets his film­mak­er bud­dies posi­tion his part­ner as the Yoko Ono of rock climb­ing? Free Solo isn’t a sto­ry about brav­ery, but fear, and not in the way it believes.