Oscar Best Documentary "Free Solo Climbing": A great challenge to death!

The 91st Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film "Free Solo Climbing" tells the story of top American rock climber Alex, who climbed one of the most famous scenic spots in Yosemite National Park in California, with bare hands and no protection. The story of El Capitan.

This documentary was a great success because it showed the audience a challenge with no retreat, and the lonely and rich heart of a challenger who strives to pursue extreme records in a self-enclosed world. world.

Alex is a native of California, USA, born in 1985. He is a legendary figure in the world of rock climbing.

After the death of his father at the age of 19, Alex, who had been involved in rock climbing for many years, dropped out of the University of California, Berkeley, and drove around in a family van, looking for any rocks worth challenging to climb.

The documentary "Free Rock Climbing" was filmed for two years and is 100 minutes long. Only the last 13 minutes show Alex's entire climbing process.

The remaining 87 minutes are all about Alex and the filming team planning the route, making plans, preliminary training, injury treatment, etc.

In order to climb the El Capitan, Alex prepared for 8 years, but the final successful climb took only 3 hours and 58 minutes.

You know, in 1958, Warren Harding successfully climbed for the first time, which took a full 46 days.

The reason why this documentary is touching is that in addition to Alex’s bravery in climbing the 3,000-foot (about 900-meter) El Capitan rock with his bare hands, the serious consequences of failure in the challenge are also the most worrying thing for the audience. reason.

You can imagine a person climbing unprotected on a sheer rock wall that is thousands of meters high and almost smooth and straight, and looking back is an abyss.

And his hands and feet could only tighten and step firmly on the protrusions that were only a few millimeters each, and even relied entirely on friction to move slowly upwards between the cracks in the rocks.

Wind, loose gravel, slippery hands, fear, etc., any accident or mistake will cause Alex to fall into a place of eternal destruction.

What kind of person would be obsessed with such an adventure?

Each of us will experience challenges, big and small, in our lives. For example, as I grow up, my biggest challenges are taking the judicial examination and running marathons.

The former was once known as "the best test in the world" and was famous for its complex knowledge and extremely low passing rate. The latter is called an "extreme endurance sport" because of its ultra-long race distance of 42.195 kilometers.

So I understand how admirable it is for a person to work hard after setting a goal.

But unlike Alex's challenge, in many kinds of life challenges, at least the consequences of failure are not serious.

If you fail the exam, you will have to go through another round of devilish review in the second year. If you don’t finish the marathon and give up, the worst thing you can do is get enough rest and training before starting again.

But Alex’s free climbing challenge was different. He chose Free Solo (unprotected rock climbing).

In other words, on a steep and smooth rock thousands of meters high, Alex will pay the price with his life if he is not careful.

He is using his life to challenge.

Alex has been living in isolation in a van, living and training alone.

Although Alex has various sponsorships and a lot of income, he has very low requirements for material life and is still a vegetarian.

Alex has established a foundation and donates one-third of its income to the foundation every year to fund some extremely poor countries and regions to improve the living conditions of people there.

For Alex, although this sport is extremely dangerous, the risks are controllable as long as you prepare carefully.

He said, "There is always something that gives you confidence, sometimes it is a good feeling, sometimes it is adequate preparation and training. I have not compromised on anything that I feel is important!" "

Doctors once conducted an MRI scan of Alex's brain, and the study found that the amygdala area of ??his brain was abnormally slow to external stimulation.

Therefore, Alex is insensitive to all external stimuli that can cause danger, fear, and disgust reactions.

This is also the main reason why he can overcome his inner fear and be calmer than ordinary people when challenging his limits.

When Alex climbed successfully, he did not feel sad and happy, cry so much that he lost control of his emotions.

Even when he called his girlfriend, he said in a calm tone, "The director asked me to cry now, the film will be better, but I don't want to cry."

When the director asked him what he wanted to do after finally succeeding in the challenge, Alex said calmly, "Let's continue training in the afternoon!"

Alex was accompanied by Asian-American director Jimmy Jin Chin, who is also a group of professional rock climbers.

The photographers need to be protected by safety ropes and shoot on steep and smooth rock walls of the same height and difficulty as Alex.

In their unremitting pursuit of work professionalism, they were once full of doubts about the nature and significance of their work.

They don’t understand, are they recording a person’s perseverance and courage, or are they recording the last moments of a professional athlete’s life?

This kind of conflict between professional requirements and moral emotions at work tortures the photographers all the time. They must be mentally prepared in advance for Alex to die at any time.

They chose the filming location in a corner that would not interfere with Alex’s climbing. One member who was filming on the ground did not even dare to look at the camera when Alex climbed to the most dangerous part. , turned his head in pain.

Alex's idol and good friend, Tommy Caldwell, who is also a top rock climber, once climbed the famous "Dawn Wall" for the first time, and there is also a documentary "Dawn Wall" ” to film Tommy’s pioneering work.

But Tommy's challenge was carried out under the protection of a protective rope.

Although Tommy admired Alex's courage to challenge, he told the director that he would not take risks like Alex.

There are some clips in the documentary about Alex's memories of his native family, as well as the problems Alex encountered in getting along with his girlfriend Sonny in the later period.

From this, I thought about how important the family of origin plays in the formation of a person’s character.

From Alex’s autobiography in the film, I know that he has been withdrawn since he was a child.

His father, who brought him into the world of rock climbing, died when Alex was 19, and his mother never made any positive comments about his behavior in his memory.

Alex's mother often said that "almost nothing is achieved". This kind of demandingness on Alex caused his extremely low self-esteem.

Alex said that it was this endless self-loathing mentality that became his motivation to never stop pursuing the ultimate peak in rock climbing.

While holding Tommy's young child, Alex smiled and said to director Kim, "During the critical period of my personality formation, my family did not hug me. At the age of 23, I had to Learn to hug. "

His girlfriend Sunny said that Alex still has a long way to go when it comes to expressing feelings for others.

Alex and his girlfriend Sonny met at a book launch, and Sonny took the initiative to leave Alex his phone number.

Sonny lived with Alex in a van, but after all he longed for a home of their own.

In the film, Alex accompanied Sonny to look at a house. While Sonny happily planned the layout of his future home, Alex looked confused.

When Sonny was struggling to measure various sizes with a ruler, Alex stood aside blankly, not even knowing to go over and help his girlfriend.

Sonny was very angry during this house-viewing trip.

Alex has always been immersed in his own world of extreme sports. For him, too close relationships may affect his challenges.

After all, it is a challenge that requires 120% concentration and 100% effort to be foolproof.

What he did had only two endings: failure and success.

Success is just one more item added to his countless records, while failure means everything is over and completely cleared.

Alex’s relationship with his girlfriend Sonny is also the most controversial part of the film.

For a top rock climber like Alex, there is no room in his personal world for anything else that has nothing to do with training. Therefore, the status of people with close relationships such as relatives and lovers is extremely unclear in his inner world.

Perhaps it can be understood that Alex's girlfriend Sunny is just the link between him and the real outside world.

Alex's inner world is a closed and rich world. The misfortune of his childhood family life created his inner withdrawn character, but he found the joy and meaning of life in the solitary game of freehand rock climbing.

In the pursuit of perfection, loneliness is the destined fate of Alex. American writer Natalie Goldberg once said in her 30-year-old best-selling book "Write My Heart", "Anything, once you devote yourself to it, is destined to be a lonely journey."

This is what the saying "It's too cold to be at a high place" is right!

Each of us has a peak in life that we strive to climb.

Although the heights are different and the difficulty is different, the never-say-die and perseverance spirit represented by Alex is a key factor in the continuous evolution of human history.

It is also a noble character shared by everyone who has worked hard and persevered!