A film guaranteed to have everyone holding their collective breath, and a “Must See Festival Film” at LA Film Festival 2018, is the death-defying, nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat documentary FREE SOLO.
Documentarians, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, are no strangers to Los Angeles Film Festival or the Film Independent Spirit Awards. Always on the cutting edge of visceral, palpable and personal storytelling, they certainly don’t disappoint with FREE SOLO, the story of professional rock climber Alex Honnold’s ascent of Yosemite’s El Capitan. If he makes it, he will become the first person in history to free solo El Capitan.
With breathtaking cinematography of Yosemite and Alex’s attempted ascent “free solo” with no ropes or safety gear of ascent, you’ll find yourself on the edge of your seat as Alex hangs on the edges of minuscule cliffs and openings in the rock face. Chin, himself a professional climber and mountaineer, not to mention cinematographer and director, continually “wows” with FREE SOLO as he and fellow cinematographers Matt Clegg, Clair Popkin and Mikey Schaefer along with some extremely talented camera operators capture the beauty and the danger inherent to El Capitan with panoramic vistas of the region and extreme close-ups of the sheer rock face Honnold is tackling. So vivid is the lensing that one can almost “feel” the slick nature of the face.
Thanks to Bob Eisenhardt’s rapier editing interweaving personal insights of colleagues, including Jimmy Chin and other cameramen documenting the ascent by hanging off the side of the rock face (albeit held by ropes, unlike Honnold), family and friends, and introspective interviews from Honnold himself talking about his eight-year dream, the tension progressively ratchets upwards with each new foothold Honnold makes. It’s impossible not to be riveted and spellbound by the beauty of man versus Mother Nature. . .and himself.
Directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin
Subject: Alex Honnold
by debbie elias, 09/19/2018 (LA Film Festival review)
