This documentary is about an extraordinary climber, Marc-André Leclerc. His mother describes him as a kid who struggled in school, and didn't even much want to live indoors. In the mountains he is in his element, and on the mountains he is impossibly talented. The jaw-dropping ascents accomplished by this prodigious mountaineer are the work of a skilled athlete and a master technician. At such dizzying heights, to be anything less would undoubtedly prove fatal. The film is directed by Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen, both 20-year climbing veterans themselves, and the movie is most electrifying in how it documents Leclerc’s preternatural calm, even as he free-solos some of the most hazardous mixed-climbing routes imaginable. Up high, where the rest of us would lose our nerve, this young man often appears to be dancing. However impossibly, Leclerc seems in scenes like these to belong to the mountains he climbs, traversing their granitic spires and glistening ice columns with intuitive grace. Each crevice, each invisible edge, reveals itself under his touch, and it’s breathtaking to observe his procession across such steep faces. Climbers often talk about a zen-like state of “flow,” in which one’s body and mind are in perfect alignment and at which point one’s skills are ideally matched to the challenge ahead. Leclerc doesn’t just live in this flow state; it’s his higher power, and he withdraws to it as a disciple to the divinity, or perhaps a moth to the flame. The commentary is delivered by veteran aplinists past and present, and all in all, I would highly recommend this window into the sport and what drives the people who do it.
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