Free Solo (2018)

  This was one of the big documentaries from last year with everyone and their mother hyping about how tense, how suspenseful, and how pants-wettingly terrifying it was.  So I was expecting a lot which is probably why I was underwhelmed.

Alex Honnold has made a living as a professional rock climber and motivational speaker.  He has climbed some of the most challenging peaks in the world but his secret dream was to free solo (aka no ropes or safety equipment) the face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.  After nearly a year of training, injuries, and personal growth, he and a camera crew set out to document his historic achievement.

The camera crew, themselves all professional climbers and colleagues of Honnold, become the emotional heart of the film.  They know exactly how dangerous this attempt is and really struggle with their own worries about putting Honnold in more peril by being distractions at a critical moment, not to mention the logistics of trying to place the cameras in order to capture the climb itself.  They worry more about his safety and stability than Honnold himself, seemingly.  He must be one of those people that's just absolutely magnetic in person because I could not otherwise understand his appeal.  He seemed totally devoid of personality that was not related to climbing and every attempt to humanize him just fell completely flat.  It's bandied about that he falls somewhere on the autism scale with his mother suggesting Asperger's Syndrome and an MRI showing a low amygdala response, but it also seems kind of like the filmmakers filling for time.

Just to clarify, it's not a bad documentary.  Just not nearly as gripping as I thought it would be considering it's a dude climbing 3000 ft up a straight cliff face where a split-second could determine the difference between life and being splattered across half a national forest.