Movie Review: Free Solo (2018)

[Dave Gray]

Free Solo (2018)

Premise: A documentary about the sport of rock climbing without any safety equipment, the kind of mind that chooses to give their life for it, and one man's dream of scaling Yosemite's El Capitan while juggling a terrifying relationship.

Rating: Horrifying and eye-opening.

This has been my favorite documentary this year.  Like the great ones, it is more about the people behind the premise, rather than the premise itself.  What kind of brain would choose something that's basically going to kill you eventually?  It's not what you think.  Who would want to be in a relationship with that person?  And do the film-makers have a moral culpability simply by covering this?

I have some acrophobia and this movie made me physically sick in some parts.  I had to play solitaire on my phone in parts just to have something to fiddle with.  I'm not even being facetious when I say that I could no longer use my phone because my hands were so wet with sweat that the screen wasn't accepting my fingers as input.

It was worth it, though.  I definitely recommend it.