Reel Rock 13

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 stp 19 Nov 2018

I generally like the Reel Rock film shows but this one was the worst I've seen. One film was really good, Age of Ondra whilst the other 3 were disappointing.

 

Age of Ondra

This was the first and longest film and follows Ondra's post-Silence quest to flash a 9a+. The story telling was good with insights into Ondra's extreme intensity and visualisation training for this goal. I felt this could have longer. In particular the trailers show Ondra on Disbelief (his 9b in Canada) so it was disappointing and rather odd that this didn't feature in the film at all. Could also have been good to see more of his trip at St Leger where he did the FA. of Eagle 4 and finally realised his dream to flash 9a+. But despite this it was still a really good film.

Valley of the Moon.

This was about climbing in the deserted desert of Jordan and the attempt establish the hardest route there, a long multipitch 5.13+. The strange thing was that the attempts failed and the route was later climbed by some Eastern Europeans. This point was only mentioned in the credits at the end. No actual footage or anything about else about them was shown. I'm left with the impression that they'd got all the good footage of the failed attempts so decided to make a film about it anyway. I suppose that's fair enough but I don't think that results in something that's meant to be one of the best films of the year.

Up to Speed.

This was about speed climbing through the eyes of a trad climber and Reel Rock staffer. As such the concept and point of the film was clear and was fairly engaging. It was a decent and enlightening short film but nothing extraordinary.

Queen Maud Land.

I'm not sure what this was meant to be about. My friend described it as an extended advert for North Face. Basically a bunch of American climbers, including Alex Honnold and Conrad Anker, go to Antarctica on a climbing holiday. They fly to some remote place and climb a bunch of unclimbed short-ish peaks on what looks like fairly chossy rock with very cold hands. My impression is that they probably decided to make the film before they'd even arrived and thus didn't have a story. This could have resulted in something really good if some unforeseen epic had come about. But nothing really exciting happened. One woman got a bit of frost bite in one toe. Alex Honnold got gripped on a massive run out. It was just climbers going climbing in an unusual and admittedly beautiful place. Seems formulaic: famous climbers + exotic location. Unfortunately that's not enough to make a good story.

 

My feeling is that either very few good climbing films were made this year or there's some distinct selection bias going on. I don't have a problem with companies funding their extended adverts but they shouldn't be shortlisted for the film shows like this and I certainly resent paying to see them.

The Age of Ondra is a proper good film: well made covering the world's best climber reaching a new historical record. Without that in this mix I would have been disappointed if not angry at having wasted my money. It would have been better if this film had been extended and the other 3 scrapped. Maybe keep the speed climbing one as a warm up and something different perhaps.

 nawface 19 Nov 2018
In reply to stp:

Agree completely.

Left feeling fairly underwhelmed. 


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