Free Solo

Free Solo is a 2018 American documentary film directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin that profiles rock climber Alex Honnold on his quest to perform the first-ever free solo climb of a route on El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park in California, in June 2017.
The film premiered at the 45th Telluride Film Festival on August 31, 2018, and also screened at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the People's Choice Award in the Documentaries category. It was released in the United States on September 28, 2018, and grossed over $28 million at the worldwide box office. Free Solo received acclaim from critics and numerous accolades, including winning Best Documentary Feature at the 91st Academy Awards.
Climber Alex Honnold has been dreaming of free-soloing the 3,000 feet (900 m) rock wall of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, a feat no one has performed. His choice of big wall climbing route on El Capitan is called Freerider, a route that was created by Alexander Huber in 1998, and which Honnold has completed several times with protection equipment. Freerider is graded at 5.13a (7c+) in difficulty, and no climber has ever completed a big-wall free solo at such a grade of difficulty in rock climbing history.
Alex is a shy loner who has lived and traveled alone in his van for several years, but recently he is sometimes joined by his new girlfriend Sanni McCandless (whom he later married). On one climb with Sanni, while she is feeding Alex's rope through a grigri on his descent, she makes a mistake, and he falls. He visits a physician and discovers he has some vertebral compression fractures. Alex admits to wanting to break up with Sanni over this incident, but decides against it after talking with her and learning the fractures are not very serious.
In the summer of 2016, Alex and Tommy Caldwell go climbing in Morocco to prepare for his El Capitan free solo. The film crew also prepares, discussing where to place cameras to best capture Alex’s climb while minimizing distractions and interference, and also the ethical dilemma of documenting this climb, knowing Alex may die on camera. At some point, Alex accepts an offer to receive an MRI in order to understand his brain's response to fear, and the results show that there is little or no activity in his amygdala in response to average stimuli.
In the fall of 2016, Alex sprained his ankle on El Capitan while traditional climbing (i.e., using ropes and protection equipment) on the first section of Freerider, the giant multi-pitch slab known as Freeblast and graded at 5.11b (6c). Not wanting to miss the chance to do the free climb that year, he only takes a brief break from climbing and resumes his preparations while his foot is still swollen. Around Halloween, Alex and Sanni carve pumpkins with Tommy and his wife and children. In an interview, Alex says his family did not hug and the word "love" was not used in his household, as his father lacked the ability to form emotional bonds.
Alex and Tommy rappel down Freerider on El Capitan, and Alex outlines his route, discussing the areas about which he is apprehensive. One section offers him two alternative pathways, which he calls "The Teflon Corner" (an internal right-angled section with a smooth slippery surface) and "The Boulder Problem" (a particularly intricate piece of the wall that has to be finished with either a jump or a wide "karate kick" stance). Both the crew and Sanni suggest abandoning the plan, and Alex admits he does not want his friends to see him die if he falls while free soloing. News of the death of Swiss climber Ueli Steck, with whom Alex had climbed, causes Alex to reflect on his own risk-taking, but Tommy comments on how little it ultimately seemed to affect Alex. When he finally decides to try to free solo El Capitan, Alex bails after the slab section of Freeblast, and filmmaker Jimmy Chin worries that the filming is putting unnecessary pressure on Alex.
After giving up on his plan to free solo El Capitan that season, Alex and Sanni buy a house in Las Vegas. Then, on June 3, 2017, Alex again attempts a free solo climb of Freerider. Sanni leaves just before he starts, expressing her apprehensions in an interview. The film crew watches nervously as Alex makes his way through each of the most difficult parts of the climb, and one cameraman turns away several times, as he cannot bear to watch. Alex completes the free solo in 3 hours and 56 minutes, celebrating at the top with Jimmy and—over the phone—Sanni. She quickly returns to be with him, and Alex does an interview with a journalist in which he contemplates his future, and the future of free solo climbing.
Prior to filming, directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin struggled with the ethical ramifications and decisions behind creating Free Solo, knowing Honnold could die on camera. Ultimately, they decided to go through with the film and devoted some time to documenting its own production process, with Chin and his camera crew discussing the challenge of not endangering climber Alex Honnold by distracting him or putting any pressure at all on him to attempt the climb. According to Vasarhelyi, filming without endangering Honnold was achieved only thanks to careful planning and practice.
The production team captured 700 hours of footage using 12 cameras. This included cameramen on the ground, cameramen on the cliff face, remote trigger cameras, and a helicopter with a 1,000 mm lens to capture the 4k video. The cameramen were able to so effectively capture Honnold’s climb from different vantage points because they were all experienced climbers themselves. Wireless mics could not be used to record sound from Honnold due to his distance from the cameras, so the filmmakers created a special recording device and had Honnold carry it inside his chalk bag.
The film was made by National Geographic Partners, which at the time of the film's release was majority-owned by 21st Century Fox, with the remainder owned by the National Geographic Society.
Free Solo premiered on August 31, 2018, at the 45th Telluride Film Festival, and it was shown at multiple film festivals internationally, including at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, after that. It was released in theaters in the U.S. on September 28.
The film grossed $17.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $11.1 million in other territories, for a total worldwide box office gross of $28.6 million.
Its opening weekend, Free Solo earned $300,804 from four theaters, its per-venue average of $75,201 surpassing both Eighth Grade for the highest per-venue average of 2018, and An Inconvenient Sequel (2017) for the highest-ever per-venue average for a documentary. The film expanded to 41 theaters its second weekend, earning $562,786, and then grossed $859,051 from 129 theaters its third weekend and $1 million from 251 theaters its fourth weekend. During its fifth weekend in theaters, the film earned $1.06 million from 394 theaters, bringing its total box office gross to over $5 million.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 98% of 160 critics' reviews of the film are positive, with an average rating of 8.2/10; the site's "critics consensus" reads: "Free Solo depicts athletic feats that many viewers will find beyond reason – and grounds the attempts in passions that are all but universal." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 83 out of 100 based on reviews from 25 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
Peter Debruge of Variety praised the pacing of the film, saying: "Apart from a slow stretch around the hour mark, the filmmakers keep things lively (with a big assist from Marco Beltrami's pulse-quickening score, the nail-biting opposite of Tim McGraw's soaring end-credits single, "Gravity")." Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair called the film "bracingly made" and felt the filmmakers properly conveyed the challenges and dangers faced by Honnold in his endeavors: "Free Solo's detailed, transfixing portrait of their hero will at least show some sort of barrier to entry, communicating to those eager wannabes that very few people indeed are built quite like Alex Honnold. And thank goodness, in a way, for that."
Michael Hale of Sight and Sound praised the filming techniques and resulting effect, saying that an image reminiscent of Greek mythology is evoked as Honnold is captured scaling the immense wall of El Capitan. John Doyle of The Globe and Mail commended the "texture" of film, specifically the tension and intensity as Honnold repeatedly risks death, as well as the relatability of the scenes with Honnold and his girlfriend.
Sam Wollastan of The Irish Times wrote that the film effectively captures an amazing athletic feat, the emotional development of Honnold, and the budding romance between Honnold and McCandless. Jane Mulkerrins of The Times also praised this emotional development arc, remarking on the duality of the film as it examines Honnold's preparation and climb alongside his relationship with McCandless: "[Free Solo] captures the death-defying climb with vertigo-inducing camerawork. We see Honnold getting ready for the climb… At the same time, the armour of invincibility he's built up over the years fractures when he begins to fall in love with Sanni.”
Georgetown University professor of English and Film and Media studies Caetlin Benson-Allott argues that Free Solo infringes upon expectations of viewers when Alex Honnold was frequently and unexpectedly at risk to die: “I could no longer trust Vasarhelyi and Chin to deliver the safe spectatorial experience I’d expected, once they’d acknowledged that they were equally committed to filming their subject’s death." Benson-Allott acknowledges his implied death as a mechanism to achieve certain emotional effects, but remarks on its minimal focus on women. Director Elizabeth Chai Vaserhelyi and girlfriend Sanni McCandless, for instance, are reduced to supporting roles, according to Benson-Allott, while Jimmy Chin is highlighted and depicted as “Free Solo's sole author." Furthermore, Alex Honnold’s depiction ties into gendered stereotypes, argues Benson-Allott: “Not all extreme athletes are men, yet the self-destructive masculinity of these athletes is also imposed on their spectators." These gender-stereotypes are reinforced, contends Benson-Allott, when Honnold criticizes his girlfriend Sanni McCandless for “wanting to be ‘happy and cozy’ rather than pursuing a life-threatening goal."
These analyses are shared by Simon Fraser University professor of History and Geography Joseph Taylor. In his analysis, Taylor remarks on the gendered stereotypes and the contrast between Honnold and McCandless, claiming that Free Solo employs a “hypermasculine narrative”. Taylor also argues that “the soul of the documentary” is the looming possibility of Honnold’s death and the coping mechanisms of his friends and coworkers. Honnold’s lack of fear in the face of likely death, for instance, intimidates his friends and family, eliciting ethical dilemmas and constant apprehensions. Taylor echoes Benson-Allott in the depiction of Honnold's challenges and risks throughout the film: “Make no mistake: we are watching the commodification of actuarial suicide."