Originally Published on Medium on November 10, 2018
There has been almost universal acclaim for Free Solo, Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Vesarhelyi’s stunning documentary. The film follows climbing genius Alex Honnold’s attempt at the first ever “free solo” (climbing without safety lines or a partner) ascent of the Yosemite Park mountain El Capitan . Spoiler alert: he succeeds.
Free Solo’s popularity is slightly puzzling in the abstract. Today, we have racing drone leagues and fighting robot leagues, scoreboards the size of Jerry Jones’ ego and video games where you can realistically crash your horse.
It’s reasonable to conclude that with the smorgasbord of entertainment options available today, a guy climbing a mountain without ropes is not noteworthy, let alone riveting. Yet the film has a 99% score on Rotten Tomatoes and has grown largely through word of mouth. That doesn’t make superficial sense, but it does on closer examination. What Honnold is doing (and what Chin and Vesarhelyi capture so well), is more riveting in 2018 than it would have been in 1918.
Just as the UFC has exploded in popularity in the 2000s, Alex Honnold, flying in the face of reason, is captivating primarily because what he is doing is so real, so visceral. Our lives are largely dictated by capricious political decisions, capricious business decisions, and unknowable impact (a veterinarian makes a real tangible impact for thousands of people and makes half as much money as a likely economically destructive management consultant). Man vs mountain, much like man vs man in the Octagon, cannot be faked, cannot be bought, it must be earned. And there are no judge’s decisions in free soloing. Luck may be capricious, but the final result is as real as it gets. It’s success, or death.
Honnold was arguably the greatest climber of all time before ascending El Cap. He lives off a $1,000 a month in a cramped van, and is, according to his answer of a student at his old school’s question, already as well off at 33 as “a moderately successful dentist”. North Face and other sponsors pay him well, and his book published in 2015 is sure to have brought in royalties. Honnold has a committed girlfriend and legions of adoring fans. Yet he choose to climb a mountain where he had a significant chance of death and the marginal positivei mpact on his day to day life will be minimal. Free Solo touches on some of the psychological underpinnings for why Honnold may be as driven as he is; a difficult childhood, lack of acceptance by his parents and peer.
What they miss is that man is not a purely “rational” creature in the sense typically described in intro to economics textbook. He is created in the image of God, and God is a creator and builder (“For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose builder and creator was God” Hebrews 1:10 ). God created man with a mandate, found in Genesis 1:28, to, “fill the earth and subdue it.”
Eric Liddell, the Scot who was chronicled in Chariots of Fire, once said, ““God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure. ” There is no rationalist, evolutionary, or other means of describing why man attempts a task that raises his chance of death, lowers his chance of reproduction, has minimal affect on his status, and arguably doesn’t serve a utilitarian good. If Honnold had never scaled El Capitan like a web-less Spiderman, human economic and spiritual activities would have continued on virtually the same course they do with the mountain conquered.
What rationalists and romantics can both understand is the tension felt between Honnold’s drive to climb the mountain and his friends and girlfriend’s desire to see him live a long life, a goal Honnold frankly acknowledges is unlikely. The tension seen in the film between Honnold and girlfriend Sunni McCandless is a conduit for exploring the divergence of duty and love. Honnold’s heart will always be most in love with climbing mountains and early in the film he talked about how he has and will drop continue to drop girlfriends if they affect his climbing.
Chin and Vesarhelyi’s masterstroke lies in their decision not to bring in dozens of journalists, experts, and old climbers to breathlessly place Honnold’s feat in historic perspective, or to speculate on his place in the pantheon that success or failure will bring. There is a mountain, there is a man, and there are his friends. And the audience, inspired.