▯
STANDING ON THE
LEFT, MID-CLIMB,
IS ALEX HONNOLD,
THE SUBJECT OF THE
NEW FILM FREE SOLO
(FREESOLOFILM.
COM).
California, she had already worked with director Mike Nichols on
the film Closer and was directing a documentary called Incorruptible,
about political and social upheaval in Senegal. The romance was
slow to blossom, and long before they went on a first date, Chin
shared a rough cut of a film project with her; ultimately, she stepped
in to co-direct and co-produce Meru, a documentary about a hairy
adventure that Chin and two other famous climbers undertook on
a supposedly insurmountable face more than 21,000 feet above sea
level in the Indian Himalayas. (Many consider the feat more diffi-
cult than conquering Mt. Everest.) “I had this incredible footage,
but it was more about the climb than the people,” Chin says. “Chai
helped craft it into a deeper narrative—honestly a different movie.”
The film ended up winning the U.S. Documentary Competition
Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival in 2015.
The couple married in 2013 and now have two children under 6,
splitting their time together between New York and Wyoming.
The Free Solo film is their first start-to-finish professional
collaboration.
To capture that high-wire act, Chin and his team had to rappel
thousands of feet with heavy equipment to capture Honnold in
action, taking extraordinary precautions to not have their rigging
appear on camera or to impact the perilous record-breaking climb-
ing. “In some ways, this was like filming the first moon landing.
Nothing like this had been done before,” says Chin. “Alex is meticu-
lous in his approach, and I fully trusted his process. But still, what
he was doing was outrageous. It was like if your job were to win the
NBA Finals, but the game is four hours long—and if you miss a shot,
you die.”
Honnold’s El Cap attempt was a success, but even if filmgoers
know in advance that the young climber will not fall to his death,
they’ll likely feel the visceral terror of the endeavor, especially as
they get to know the human implications of the story—watching
Honnold’s girlfriend struggle with his complete commitment to his
dangerous dream, for instance, or learning about his solitary child-
hood. “Chai and I wanted to make an honest film,” says Chin.
“We’re able to have a good partnership because we bring very differ-
ent things to the table. I could focus on the high-angle stuff, while
Chai, with all her experience in cinema verité, was able to construct
the narrative.”
Vasarhelyi puts a finer point on it. “At times I was terrified,” she
says. “The heaviness of the stakes was inescapable.”
As our hike in Jackson nears its end, the physical effort of the
couple’s earlier run up the mountain starts to show. We decide it’s
time to take the tram to the ski lodge at the bottom and make plans
to lay waste to an enormous salad and pizza. While we wait for our
ride, Chin points into the valley below, to an enormous green pas-
ture, and tries to pinpoint the location of his house. “Right there, on
the edge of the meadow,” he says with an easy smile, before pausing
to take in the panorama of rock and ice and blue sky all around us.
“But these mountains—that’s where I live.”20 OCTOBER 2018 ❖ SUNSET
JIMMY CHIN/NATIONAL GEORGRAPHICTravel