#Alex honnold movie movie
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He’s like a superhero whose superpower is near fearlessness.”Īs climbing grows and more people are exposed to the great and not-so-great achievements of the sport, we’ll rely on great videographers like Jimmy Chin to capture the real and raw emotions of the sport.For Alex Honnold, climbing Yosemite National Park’s notorious El Capitan was not something he dreamt about once and then did it. “Essentially, what startles us normies, triggers in us an innate aversion, barely registers to Honnold. On the more lighthearted side, we see Honnold get a brain scan, and then a doctor, sounding a bit amused, explaining to him that he has an extremely high threshold for stimuli.

#Alex honnold movie free

One of the first pieces to be published after the film’s premiere was in Vannity Fair, where Richard Lawson said, “Is Alex Honnold of sound mind? Free Solo delves a little into this, with both wry whimsy and serious inquiry. In the diciest sections, they set up remote cameras to avoid disrupting Honnold’s concentration.” Read the article here. To capture each move, Chin and the crew rappelled to key spots along the route.

He said, “During the climb Honnold averaged a blistering 100 vertical feet every seven and a half minutes. In a recent article published by National Geogrpahic, Peter Gwin talks about how Jimmy Chin filmed Honnold’s free solo. Honnold isn’t robotic (he’s actually somewhat goofy, at times), but when confronted with a difficult question, like the future he imagines with McCandless, he shuts down rather than interrogate it further.” “He’s aware of the danger-there’s not much room for recklessness in free soloing-but his success partly requires him to not think about his potential death and injury. In Alone on the Wall, a memoir published not long before he began his first preparations for El Capitan, Honnold describes his mentality during a climb as ’empty.’

But even within this group, Honnold is regarded as a risk taker. Before the movie’s premiere, he spoke with Rolling Stone about depression, spirituality and what he believes happens when we die.”Īnd David Simms wrote in The Atlantic, “Honnold exists in a community that’s besieged with death all of the climbers he meets up with and talks to over the course of the film have a fatalistic air to them. His eyes are so large that the crew on Free Solo referred to him as ‘Bambi,’ yet they’re also shark-like - eerily calm and penetrating. In it, Joe McGovern said, “In person, 33-year-old Honnold, just under six feet tall and gangly, is as captivating as he is onscreen. Honnold sometimes strikes me as a tragic figure, wrapped so tight that he can’t acknowledge how much pain he causes those who care about him.”Įven Rolling Stone got in on the action with an interview with Honnold that you should read here. Peter Vignerson said, “Should the rest of us watch him climb? In the months since I first watched Free Solo, I haven’t settled on a satisfying answer.

#Alex honnold movie movie

Man, rock, camera: they’re old suspects, but here they seem made anew.”įree Solo is also being called the “the best climbing movie ever made” by Outside. The classic tension between the sublime and the human spirit breaks down. He doesn’t just risk his life he cares almost nothing for it. He isn’t just fearless he doesn’t know fear. Livingstone went on to write, “Honnold is such an intense version of the character that he pushes the archetype past its ordinary boundaries.

Joe Livingstone recently wrote in The New Republic that Honnold’s ascent “seems to be a suicide mission.”