Free Solo was the only Oscar-nominated documentary I hadn’t seen at the time of the Academy Awards ceremony, and of course it was the winner for Best Documentary Feature, but it’s free to stream on Hulu now and certainly worth a watch … although I wonder if I got a very different message from it than many other people did. I don’t think this guy is a hero at all, nor is it really a portrait of a great achievement. Free Solo presents us with a sort of modern Don Quixote whose quest is inexplicable and maybe pointless, and who pursues the goal in this film with disregard for his own life and for the wishes of the person who is, or should be, the most important to him.
Alex Honnold is a free solo climber, which means he climbs giant, sheer rock faces without ropes or other safety gear. This is, as you might imagine, really fucking dangerous; at one point in this documentary we see brief video or photo montages of other famous free soloists who fell to their deaths. In Free Solo, directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin follow Honnold as he prepares to scale El Capitan, known as El Cap, a 3000-foot wall in Yosemite National Park in California, which nobody had free-soloed before. We know that he survived – had he died, the film might not exist, and his death would have made the news – although the way the documentarians filmed the ascent is itself noteworthy, and many of the drone shots, near and far, of El Cap are utterly breathtaking. There’s a scene at the end that gives you a sense of how small a human is in comparison to the rock itself, and I think it challenges our ability to understand the scale of the world around us.
Free Solo aims to be about much more than strictly the ascent, and it partially succeeds. Honnold is a different cat, to put it gently. He reveals things about his childhood that may explain his strange affect, and undergoes an fMRI at one point that tells him and us that his amygdala is not very sensitive to excitement, which likely contributes to his thrill-seeking behavior as well. He and his mother have extremely different stories of what his father, who died when Honnold was 19, was like. Honnold has lived in a van for years and keeps a rather ascetic existence, with bizarre habits that would seem to go along with just a peculiar choice of living arrangements. There’s a scene where he cooks some strange assemblage of vegetables and beans and then eats it with a giant, flat cooking spatula, as if no one ever showed him how to use utensils.
Early in the film, a new character appears, Sanni, who attended a book-signing of Honnold’s, slipped him her number, and has since become his girlfriend. (Nobody has ever slipped me a number at a book signing, so clearly climbing giant rocks > baseball stats.) She clearly loves him, although there’s never the sense that this is some sort of hero-worship, and she is actively working both to get him to participate in a normal, adult, romantic relationship, and to consider that chasing death with these free solo climbs now affects her life too. He’s strangely detached in most of his interactions with her – there’s one exception at the end of the movie when we see him react to her in new ways, like the egg cracked and he’s coming out of his shell – and comes off as unaware of her emotions much of the time. It does not help matters that Sanni is both very upbeat and very pretty, which I think had to bias me in her favor and likely will have the same effect on many viewers. She’s just – here’s that word – likeable, which makes Honnold look like Lukas Haas playing a character with Asperger’s by comparison.
Sanni’s arrival in the film was a necessary bit of luck, as she gives us the best window on to Honnold’s personality and pushes him at least a little to explain his motivation for continuing to climb increasingly dangerous cliffs. (It’s not mentioned in the film, but Honnold described himself in a 2011 interview as a “militant atheist,” and I can not imagine having the strong belief that there is nothing after death and then pursuing a career that is likely to lead to an early decease.) I don’t think Free Solo explains enough why Honnold does what he does; he comes off like a modern George Mallory, who answered the question of why he wanted to climb Mount Everest with the possibly apocryphal answer “Because it’s there.” We get something from that fMRI result, and more from his interactions with Sanni, but he’s still something of an enigma even at the end of it all, especially since there’s no good reason he has to climb without some sort of protection. When you watch him ascend, it is absolutely impressive and Vasarhelyi and Chin do a superb job of capturing his climb, but how he could do this when there’s someone on the ground who’s waiting to hear he survived and would be devastated if he didn’t, is completely beyond me.
I just watched this over the weekend, and I completely agree with your take on the film, Keith. I didn’t really view him as a hero or someone that is trying to achieve greatness. At one point he says something to the effect of “you can’t achieve greatness without pushing the limits.” I thought, is free soloing El Cap really something great? I suppose it is within the climbing community but for an average person, I just kept coming back to why?
The film, to me, was a portrait of a man who couldn’t feel normal emotions without having death standing right behind him, waiting. The juxtaposition of how he acted toward Sanni throughout the film and how he reacted to reaching the top of El Cap was stark; he was almost void of emotion of any kind until he reached the top of El Cap. If free soloing like this is really the only way for him to feel truly alive, I can’t imagine he’ll live very long. Eventually his body will start breaking down from age and even the easiest climbs he does now will be as dangerous as the one in the film.
A quick note on Sanni: she seems to really love him, but she might be better off moving on from Honnold. I don’t think she’s ever going to get the emotional support she (and really all of us) need to live happily. It would also be unfair for her to ask him to stop when free soloing clearly makes him truly happy. I can’t imagine the night and day she had knowing that her significant other was attempting something that has a high probability of leading to his death. I know I couldn’t live with that kind of fear on a regular basis.
Honnold’s relationship with his girlfriend is every bit as interesting as his climb. All behavior is caused. The film hints at environmental and physical reasons he is the way he is. He’s on a journey. He’s bound to die on a mountain somewhere, but the remains that he’ll find another way to feel as alive as he does on the mountain.
I would highly recommend Dawn Wall a documentary about Tommy Caldwell’s climb of El Capitan. Caldwell is a friend of Honnold’s who helped him prepare for this climb.
I came away from the film hating Sanni. Okay, hate is probably too strong of a word but, to me, she is the villain of the documentary, if there could be such a thing.
Not word for word, but Alex says, early on in the film, that between climbing and a girlfriend (relationship?), he’d always choose climbing. At least explicitly, that never changes during the film. That being said, he is clearly worried about the people around him. Maybe I am remembering incorrectly, but I believe he expresses uneasiness (nervousness?) free soloing El Cap with the cameramen present, because he doesn’t want to die in front of them and he purposefully does not tell people when he free solos because he doesn’t want them to worry about him. Because of this, I think it is safe to assume he cares about Sanni and her fears.
The portion of the doc that has stuck with me more than anything outside of the climbing portions was when Alex was trying to put the refrigerator together. To watch someone who is one of the best in the world at what he does going from that freedom of living in his van, travelling to wherever he wants in order to climb, to putting together furniture was very emotional. Perhaps I am not giving enough credit to Alex and his free will (and putting too much blame on Sanni), but it felt like taking a wild animal, putting it in a zoo, and giving it a ball to play with.
Alex chose to be in a relationship, and he should know that there are responsibilities, such as staying alive, to maintain the relationship. I will grant that failing to find compromise between climbing and his relationship is selfish. However, he was bluntly honest throughout the documentary of his desires and intentions, and those should be considerations for Sanni when deciding to maintain a relationship with him.
I thought the doc was great because it brought out those emotions in me. It clearly was just something Alex went along with, as he never came across as the person that would desire a documentary to be made about him.
Regardless, thank you for your write ups, I sincerely enjoy them, and for providing a space to write our own thoughts.
Totally agree he’s kind of a weirdo and not really heroic, and that Sanni makes the picture watchable.
If you haven’t seen The Dawn Wall, that’s another one on Netflix that’s just amazing, and the guys we follow are much more likeable (one of them is Alex’s training partner in Free Solo). You get a much better sense in that one why the guy is attempting the climb. (It’s Free Climbing, not Free Soloing in The Dawn Wall. Not quite as insane.)
I totally agree with you that the movie doesn’t make Honnold out as a hero. Which is why it was so weird when the director, in her speech accepting the Oscar, talked about the movie being for “everyone who believes in the impossible.” I was left questioning what movie she thought they made. Glad to see I wasn’t alone in my interpretation
Thanks for the review, Keith.
It’s curious how this movie impacts people so differently. The first time I saw it was in theaters a few months ago and was absolutely floored. I sweated through the final 15 minutes of the film – among the most breathtaking and nervous moments I’ve ever felt in a cinema (I can only compare it to a large portion of Mad Max: Fury Road – which I think is the best piece of cinema made so far this century). My initial experience with the film didn’t focus so much on the character interaction – but on the enormity of the experience and the mechanics of navigating this kind of feat with so many people watching. As he says at the start “I don’t tell people before I free solo something, I don’t want any additional pressure.” The idea he’d willingly make this climb as 5-10 people watched him do this is incredibly gutsy and something none of us can quite put a finger on. THAT, in my mind is why this film is worth watching. The tension of a daring, impossibly dangerous climb, without aid, while we and the camera-person watch is mesmerizing.
The second time I watched it, I saw it totally differently. His relationship with Sanni – who appears to enter into a relationship with this type of athlete with eyes completely open – was a focal point the second time around. Honnold isn’t out to harm anyone else, he’s out there testing the limits of himself and I don’t need this story to be much more complex than that. Feats don’t always require a purpose and don’t always yield NASA level scientific discoveries. Some things are accomplished to test human resiliency. A happily-ever-after story in the burbs with 4 kids seems an unlikely end for him and I’m not sure I’d want to see him caged in order to make his loved ones feel less nervous. I sympathize with Sanni here, but he didn’t become this type of climber on her watch, he was this type of person way before she came onto the scene. I think she attempts to alter his mindset and make him consider her in deciding to climb – but it comes off as her asking him to change his nature. I think that’s what clearly aggravates some of this film’s viewers. That’s critical cinematic tension and it adds to the film – which would be totally different if he was a single-man dare devil – but the fact that he wins the battle is what makes the film most fully realized. If he had relented and said “I just want to make you happy” it would’ve felt like a rosy-colored fiction piece, rather than an authentic portrait of an enigmatic athlete.
Agree with this review, but with a slightly different net takeaway.
It’s really Honnold’s single-minded determination to achieve a goal most people would would never dream of pursuing that is the subject of the movie. High-def shots of Yosemite look damn sexy, and the climb itself is ridiculous for its audacity and difficulty. But I think Free Solo is more about Honnold’s quest to feel something, even if only through putting himself in precarious situations. And yes, the music soared when he summited El Cap, but the ‘epilogue’ shots left a more lasting, depressing impression: Honnold won’t ever stop, he’ll always keep hang-boarding in his van, prepping for the next headline-blowing free solo climb. While you can certainly debate what value his achievements bring to broader society, I don’t think anyone will question that he’s living life exactly as he chooses to, even if it means doing things others would never consider. And I do think there is something heroic in that.
The crux of the issue is when Alex says (paraphrasing) that Sanni just wants a normal, happy life and Alex doesn’t believe greatness can come from a comfortable life. I view the movie as a meditation on genius/greatness. How many geniuses have terrible relationships with family because they have a single minded obsession with their craft (be it music, science, coaching, business, whatever)? I don’t view this as being altogether different than, say, Steve Jobs being an allegedly bad father. Except, well, Honnold isn’t married to Sanni at the time of the climb, and as someone points out above, he never really minced words with her about his primary motivations.
I did appreciate that Vasarhelyi specifically noted in her Oscar acceptance speech that Sanni’s presence made the movie more interesting. Without her, and without that relationship, there’s no chance this movie would have been as good or successful.
Adding one more thought about greatness…whether someone considers Honnold’s achievement to be “great” is (I think) immaterial. There is little question that he is truly great at his craft. I would argue he’s “greater” than Mike Trout by a fair margin.
Completely agree with the meditation on genius aspect of the film–substitute El Cap for some internet start-up or impossible math equation and it’s largely the same motif of an obsessive who puts their focus ahead of their relationships. Personally I’d rather watch shots of Yosemite than some Silicon Valley office building so I’m good with it.
What’s also fascinating as how much people talk about Sanni; as much as I love climbing and respect Alex’s skill without Sanni I’m not sure you really even have much of a movie.
Have to disagree here. I think the achievement is incredible and really so big that it’s difficult to compare to other individual athletic accomplishments.
As a movie, this was a fascinating watch – even kind of knowing the outcome. If you needed to be given a reason “why” Alex does what he does then you were likely going to be disappointed. He’s clearly wired differently and his reasons won’t register with most people. The cinematography was excellent and highlighted the scale and near-impossibility of his task.
A powerful film that will stick with me for a long time.
I think the “wired differently” comments are really understating the neurobiology. Based on both the fMRI and interviews, Alex really does not exhibit fear and excitement in the way someone with a “normal” brain would. I do not consider his behavior courageous, because in my mind courage comes from a place of overcoming fear and not literal fearlessness. I do consider this addictive behavior, and his brain “wiring” is an extreme type often seen other types of addicts who engage in risky behavior. I find this sad, and likely to end in tragedy.
I agree you can’t display courage if you don’t have fear.
I disagree that his behavior is sad. I think it would be sad to live a life that is unfulfilling just for the sake of being “safe”.
I do find it sad that he feels a compulsion to engage in extreme risk-taking to be happy. His compulsion is more interesting than sex, drugs, gambling, etc., but it is a compulsion nonetheless.
Check out the 2013 documentary McConkey for a similar profile of another pioneering thrill seeker, albeit with a much different ending. (That’s not a spoiler, it’s omnipresent in the film.)
I always wondered why certain individuals flirt with such extreme dangers and McConkey led me to a little bit of understanding.