Free Solo

[wilberfan]

From award-winning documentary filmmaker E. Chai Vasarhelyi ("MERU") and world-renowned photographer and mountaineer Jimmy Chin comes National Geographic Documentary Film's FREE SOLO, a stunning, intimate and unflinching portrait of the free soloist climber Alex Honnold, as he prepares to achieve his lifelong dream: climbing the face of the world's most famous rock... the 3,000ft El Capitan in Yosemite National Park... without a rope. Celebrated as one of the greatest athletic feats of any kind, Honnold's climb set the ultimate standard: perfection or death. Succeeding in this challenge, Honnold enters his story in the annals of human achievement. FREE SOLO is both an edge-of-your seat thriller and an inspiring portrait of an athlete who exceeded our current understanding of human physical and mental potential. The result is a triumph of the human spirit.

The climb is a truly amazing accomplishment, but I found the film itself--generally seen as the front-runner for the Documentary Feature Oscar--repetitive and--how the hell is this possible--boring.  I found it uninvolving enough that I--get this--turned it off before the footage of the actual climb itself.

[Alethia]

A friend of mine saw it in IMAX and was blown away. I have a bit of a heights thing so this is a no-go for me.

[pete]

I remember feeling myself after my very first advertising gig and while editing I came across some nat geo piece on the director Jimmy Chin and immediately felt like a piece of garbage going back to editing a bunch pieces of sizzling fish for some salmon company. Guess he's never stopped!