No.322799
Wizards,
Is this man a fraud? I just watched the "Free Solo" film of this guy supposedly climbing a very tall mountain in a single go without any harness/rope/etc, yet within the run-time of the film itself there is no continuous shot of his attempt, no one unbroken visual tracing of his achievement; the movie is basically 1.5hrs of the guy talking about himself, of his family talking about how worried they are about him, about what sort of diet he likes to follow, about his differences with his girlfriend, etc. Throughout the entire film there is perhaps only a 20min. segment of actual climbing. And again and just as importantly – there exists no one continuous unedited uninterrupted shot of his climb. It is all chopped. You see him start at the bottom, then further graduating sections of his path ascending up the mountain are illustrated to the viewer with CG, then it cuts back to him appearing at some random higher point on the mountain, then more capturing of the emotions of his friends ("he's crazy, I can't ever watch him do this again, etc."), then we return to find him at a still higher point on the mountain until the top is finally illogically reached without there ever having been any evidence of a continuous climb.
I find this suspicious. Why couldn't the movie just have been what is was advertised to be – a cinematographic documenting of a man climbing a tall mountain? The film should have been left unmolested from all the above distractions. What was the purpose to this movie if it were advertised to be a documentation of an athletic event for which it offered no full evidence? Why exclude the full visual record of such a claimed great achievement if the achievement is really there? But lastly why is the viewership that applied itself to the watching of this film so uncritical? They just believe what they're shown. Why?
I may also now need to own to say that the showing of this recent “free solo” climb of the tower in Taipei felt to me like a kindred sort of falsehood and like with the film I am given to ask: Why all the cuts? Why not one sustained continuous shot of the ascent? Why not before all be committed to the producing of clear cinematic proof of the climb? None of it makes any sense, leastwise from the perspective of the directors themselves who would want to create a picture with maxed dramatic appeal.
But then if this is all fake, what is the aim native to the minds of the deceivers that motivates the deception? I can’t understand it.