“Free Solo”: A young man climbs El Capitan without
ropes as only Spider Man could
Just having gotten back from the San Francisco Bay
area and had a spectacular flight over the Sierra Nevada, I saw “Free Solo” as
an extension of my recent trip.
This is the second science-oriented documentary from
National Geographic (“Science Fair”, Sept. 28) in two weeks. And the film
certainly carries out the theme “the young people will win.”
The film traces the rock climbing
career of Alex Honnold, now 33, who became the first
person to climb El Capitan Half Dome in the California Sierra Nevada, on Saturday
June 3, 2017, without ropes, in slightly less than four hours. The film is
directed by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. The camera work on the climbs is amazing and
required considerable technical skill and athleticism of some of the crew. I presume choppers were used to film from
higher up the cliff.
Curiously, his girl friend
does not want to watch, given the “risk”.
The final climb is indeed harrowing. Honnold becomes Spider Man (“with great power comes great
responsibility”) and it looks physically impossible to me that athletic shoes
and finger tips could hold on to a vertical cliff.
Honnold
also rather looks like superman. He is
thin and superhumanly strong with upper body capacity. His personality is
interesting. He says his girl friend wants to be happy, but
being happy is not a satisfactory life objective; overcoming challenges (like a
“warrior”) is. An MRI shoes an amygdala
less responsive than usual to external stimuli, so much motivation comes from
within. Although he is socially
comfortable, in some ways his personality displays the unusual abilities and
laser focus than sometimes are associated with mild autism. The film shows him traveling to Africa to
start a foundation and later to train in Morocco. He gets a spinal compression fracture and
later a broken foot, requiring an air cast, and yet continues to train.
Honnold
lived out of a large van for some time, before buying a house in Las Vegas,
apparently near Red Rock Canyon. He has
experimented with migrating toward a vegetarian diet for sustainability. I think Bryce Harper may be a neighbor.
He speaks at a school in his home
town Sacramento, and says his climbing earns him a living as well as a
“moderately successful dentist”. That’s an odd metaphor.
Honnold
is certainly an outstanding role model, worthy of David Hogg’s phrase.
Note: If you drive West from Reno and Lake Tahoe along
US 50, you pass at least two other rock formations, on the south side of the
highway, that resemble “little” El Capitans. But Yosemite is about 70 miles south of US
50.
NY Times Op Doc short film on Honnold's climb:
Honnold's near death-fall
Name: “Free Solo”
Director, writer: Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Released: 2018
Format: 1.85:1
(I wish this were available in Imax to Smithsonian and science
theaters.)
When and how viewed: Angelika Mosaic 2018/10/5
Length: 100
Rating: PG-13
Companies: National Geographic Documentary, Itinerant
Films, Little Monster
Stars: ****_
(Posted: Friday, October 5, 2018
at 5:45 PM EDT)