“Perfection or death.” That’s the standard set by Alex Honnold’s free solo climb up the 3,000-foot granite face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park in 2017.
You probably shouldn’t try such a climb on your own, but you can watch Honnold make the journey — without a rope or other safety equipment — on the screen of the Rangos Giant Cinema at the Carnegie Science Center Jan. 25-27 in the Oscar-nominated National Geographic Documentary Film “Free Solo.”
The documentary, from filmmaker E. Chai Vasarhelyi and photographer Jimmy Chin, is also showing at the AMC Waterfront 22 theater in Homestead.
It was nominated this week for the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary.
Hannold took about four hours to make the climb. But the crew of professional climbers and cameramen filmed his gravity-defying story over 28 days for about a year, according to a National Geographic story about the film.
“It was very important that the film would be about Alex’s process,” Chin told National Geographic. “Whether it ended with him summiting El Cap or deciding not to go for it didn’t matter. It was always about how do you even think about doing something so mind-bending.”
Jamie Martines is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Jamie at 724-850-2867, jmartines@tribweb.com or via Twitter @Jamie_Martines.
