Ten years after "The Man on a Tightrope" won the 81st Sister Awards and awarded the best documentary feature film, this year's Oscars awarded the best documentary feature film to another extreme sports documentary "Freehand Rock Climbing".
The title Free Solo, that is, unprotected rock climbing, as the name suggests, is rock climbing with bare hands without any protection. In the film, the male protagonist Alex tried to climb to the top of El Chief Rock, which is more than 900 meters high and the rock wall is almost vertical. In the first 80 minutes of the film, he is almost always testing and training to climb the peak. The film meticulously records his physical and psychological preparations.
At the end of the film, Alex finally crossed the extreme plane and the monster crack, and a telephoto lens was aimed at him climbing up the rock. No one who has seen this movie can forget this scene: in the wide field of vision of the aerial photography, half are the green canyon forest, and half are the top of the vertical rock wall. Leaping lightly on the plane of the top of the mountain, Alex's body is like a black and red miniature point, so small compared to the mountains he conquered, but it is even more shocking because of his smallness.
After the film, my friend and I said: Isn't this Yosemite that he climbed the same national park we visited together four years ago? She replied: Yes, don't you remember? The mountain we climbed at that time was just opposite the El Capitan Rock, and we could see it when we climbed it. But even with the shorter one, we gave up halfway.
I thought about the exhausting sunset that afternoon, and only sighed, thinking that people are more popular than dead people.
After watching the movie, most viewers will develop the same admiration for extreme athletes as I did in the previous article. They are solitary heroes, unyielding dream catchers, sincere and great.
However, in the process of watching the movie, in addition to Alex's adventure, another existence that I can't forget is always staring at his camera.
Documentary director Jin Guowei was previously a photographer for "National Geographic" and has extensive outdoor experience and outdoor sports shooting experience. This time to shoot a rock climber, he asked all photographers to be experienced rock climbers at the same time. Only in this way can this adventure on the cliffs be recorded most clearly.
In the film, the camera is often invisible. Most of the time, the audience can only see Alex climbing the rock alone, but not the existence of the filming team. Only in the behind-the-scenes photos, the photographers who were suspended hundreds of meters in the air and showed their magical powers were revealed one by one.
This "invisible" following is very important to Alex because it minimizes the impact on him.
For two years, the film crew followed Alex's rock climbing training. In the process of groping out the outline of El Emirates Rock, the film crew gradually found the most suitable shooting angle. On the last day of rock climbing, the footage we saw was provided by 5 photographers on the rock wall, 3 follow-up photographers who stayed on the ground, and a helicopter responsible for aerial photography.
However, due to the nature of extreme sports, the gaze of the camera always implies ethical concerns. Although in Alex's words, he likes to distinguish between the words risk and consequence. That is, when he is climbing, he tends to think that the risk of his falling off the cliff is actually very small, rather than thinking that the consequences of his falling will be very serious. But in any case, as an unprotected rock climber, the possibility of his misses cannot be ignored, not to mention many of his predecessors who have died in the film.
So what the film records is actually a subject with a high probability of death. In this case, is the gaze of the camera ethical? In other words, what kind of camera gaze can be moral?
As early as 1959, the pioneers of the French New Wave discussed the relationship between the image and ethics. Luc Murray said, "Tracking shots is a moral issue." This was followed by Godard's more famous declaration: "Travelling shots are a moral issue." The film's handling of the Holocaust. They believe that traversing and close-up shots eliminate the distance that should exist between the audience and the subject, that is, the victims of the massacre, thus losing both the respect for the subject and the freedom of the audience to form a self-perception of historical events.
The choice of shots requires extra care, precisely because the boundaries between the world shown in the film and the real world are not clear-cut. Anyone who has seen "Cinema Paradise" will be impressed by the plot: the little boy Duoduo gets some film footage from the projectionist. He kept the film in the box, but the film was flammable and nearly started a fire.
It's a metaphor that couldn't be more obvious: just as film is flammable, cinema can indeed jeopardize reality, the subject it presents.
Although the camera remains invisible most of the time, this is also admitted in "Free Rock Climbing". In the middle of the film, Alex attempted an unprotected ascent, but gave up halfway. The footage then recorded a conversation between the crew members. Worrying one of the members said, “Only when Alex is truly confident and secure can he be comfortable with the camera and the presence of others. And that’s the dilemma of filming. It’s never been broken: As long as we are there, it must be different. ”
However, unexpectedly, Jin Guowei said: "Last year, he changed his mind (referring to giving up rock climbing), which means a lot to me. Because it shows that our presence did not give him any pressure to bite the bullet. This really makes me feel at ease. few."
This is one of the most memorable dialogues in the film for me. It is this dialogue that lessens the suspicion that the film is exploiting the documentary subject, or using his expedition and possible death as a spectacle and a selling point. The director is not disappointed by Alex's abandonment, because he is more concerned about Alex's life as a friend than whether the rock climbing that is the subject of the documentary can be completed in a short time.
The film continues to Alex's final adventure. The film crew who stayed on the ground and their long guns and short guns appeared for the first time, interspersed and contrasted with Alex on the rock wall. Most of the time, the photographer stared silently at Alex in the lens, but he couldn't help but turn his back when the latter was about to pass through the monster's big rift in an almost unergonomic way. He shook his head and bemoaned his companions: "I can't believe you guys dare to keep watching. Oh no, I don't want to, I can't."
When Alex finally passed the last level without any risk, a photographer sighed: "Today is the most wonderful day of Alex's life." Another companion who had been frightened and collapsed responded: "This is Definitely not my best day. I've had enough, this is the last time, we'll never do this again."
During this process, director Jin Guowei was completely absent. His voice only appeared through the communication device off-screen, and he cautiously confirmed to his colleagues: Please let me know when he passed the extreme tablet?
In contrast to Alex's indomitable loneliness, the forgiveness, tension and unbearableness of the director and the cameraman made the onlookers even more emotional. Their response to rock climbing provides an example for the audience: not a passerby who stays out of the way, not an indifferent consumer of a visual spectacle, not a bloodthirsty shark who senses the smell of blood. Only in an attitude of "can't bear to see" can the "seeing" of the camera become moral.
Although the title of the film is called Free Solo, and solo means alone, alone, it is reassuring that Alex is never alone on the icy cliff.
(This article was first published on Mu Weier)
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