**** outta *****

4 outta 5

Nominated this year for a Best Documentary Oscar, Free Solo is a visceral experience that has been released for IMAX screens. In a Digital IMAX presentation (not quite true IMAX size but close) it’s astoundingly immersive, placing the viewer right on the edge and leaning over. It does sometimes feel like a nature documentary with the long loving pans across the El Capitan mountain but considering the movie is produced by National Geographic that is expected. It also gets into the head of the person free climbing a mountain without any ropes or picks, just only his hands and his feet. And a bit of chalk on his hands too. Which is about as much an advantage as probably wearing shoes would be, which is to say not a lot.

Alex Honnold is a man with a dream of climbing the sprawling El Capitan mountain using the free solo climbing technique by scaling a mountain unassisted. Climbers rather consistently perish doing this. But Alex has spent his life doing various crazy climbs and has even made quite a good living, comparable to “a moderately successful dentist”. Although, he’s still sleeping in a van and driving from climb to climb. This completely aggravates his long suffering girlfriend, Sanni, who is standing by her man even though he sort of thinks that she’s a jinx since he started seeing her he has had rather nasty spills. But he still wants to tackle that mountain and the film crew led by co-director Jimmy Chin will go along if Alex makes it or literally dies trying.

The mountain climbing is insane as Alex makes for a very compelling person to wrap the documentary around. He straight up says that doing a climb is more important than worrying about his life. His compulsion to climb is reinforced as, at one point, Alex gets a brain scan that that reveals his brain takes a lot to be stimulated. Sanni is there for him although he always puts the climb first. Even on the day of his big climb she leaves him alone because he doesn’t want to worry about her. She is shown later dealing with the potentially tragic notion that may be the final time she sees him. The loving girlfriend makes for a fun contrast to his determination although sometimes there seems to be a skewed dynamic.

One scene has them settling into domestic life with Alex finally purchasing a house and it’s a pretty funny how a guy who lives in his van to scale mountains is rather befuddled by home owning, which the girlfriend is totally excited for. The movie didn’t particularly need a scene where they go fridge shopping but it’s just kind of amusing to see the death-defying free climber navigate a hardware store of random fridges, settling on a very basic and functional model.

There’s a bit about how the film crew is following Alex around and maybe if being there is affecting his climb, sort of the scientific conundrum that if something has been observed than it automatically changes the outcome. Co-director Chin pops up a few times looking rather warry about the entire enterprise. Alex is much more comfortable climbing on his own, he took to climbing free solo originally simply because it was by himself, but the film crew hovering around him makes him nervous. The crew is hanging from cables mere feet away from Alex as nothing is supporting him which even looks rather precarious. And there’s even a moment where someone brings up the fact that maybe one of their camera drones could inadvertently hit him and send him spiraling off to his demise.

If there is a fault in the movie sometimes the climbing terminology whizzes by so fast and furious that it becomes a bit of a blur of technical gobbledegook. One thing that is very cool is that the film goes over certain treacherous sections of the mountain, climbing up a very long crack for hundreds of feet or a completely almost impossible gap he has to figure out how to get across. Alex shows how simply leaning one way or the left leaves his entire body vulnerable as all of his weight is supported by either his fingertips or the tips of his toes. It’s pretty nuts.

The photography is spectacular, showing off the grandeur and scale of the climb. There are a lot of interview pieces that are small and intimate which contrasts with the wide beautiful shots of Alex scaling the mountain. The quality of the image is great with closeups seeing every rocky crag and bits of chalk on closeups of Alex scrambling for grips and wide panning overhead images where he’s tiny in the frame. When Alex goes for the big climb, the crew is relegated to one zoomed in image because they cannot get camera operators out there safely but his travel is shown by an infographic of his treacherous path along El Capitan mountain.

Free Solo is a compelling watch that works great in a large theatrical setting, feeling like the audience is along for the climb. Watching him do it, his actions are sort of idiotic yet remarkable and utterly terrifying. Still, as Alex states happily and succinctly at the end, “that was delightful.”