Nosh 129: 'Free Solo,' 'The Old Man & the Gun'

Flix Nosh is a personal movie menu, fresh each Friday.

APPETIZER: Reviews of Free Solo and The Old Man & the Gun

Free Solo

Some documentaries grab a piece of reality that makes most fictional films seem like spun taffy. Free Solo grabs a huge granite slab, El Capitan in Yosemite Valley. On June 3, 2017, Alex Honnold became at 32 the first solo climber to scale its 3,000 feet of sheer, vertical fear, without ropes or grips. His astonishing, almost four-hour ascent is compressed into the final 20-some minutes of Free Solo, among the most nerve-wracking experiences I’ve ever had with a movie. I guessed that Honnold would make it – few documentaries star athletic failure – but as I watched, spellbound, I really wasn’t sure.

Even some veteran camera crew, nerves taut, found it hard to keep watching as Alex, tiny in a red shirt on a vast gray wall, overcame many danger points. He had been a reclusive Sacramento kid, born to a non-hugging mom and a restless, Asperger’s father. Dropping out of Berkeley, Alex found the mountains. On solo climbs, including Yosemite’s Half Dome, “I walk through the fear until it’s just not there anymore.” This requires subtle muscle, steel nerve, cold reflex, eagle sight, perfect timing, laser thinking. One tiny error can bring death (this physically beautiful movie is not for anyone who fears altitude).

The National Geographic production is from Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Vasarhelyi, who made the great Himalayan documentary Meru. Its best tactic is the overlap of two major life tests: the amazing climb, after injuries and delays, and shy-macho Alex finding a girlfriend. With radiant Sanni McCandless the soloist risks ascending that most humanly exposed peak, Mt. Romance. Both fear that their relationship could blunt his edge and alter his crucial focus (Sanni’s effort to mask her anxiety is endearing). Free Solo takes us high, in more than one direction. These heights have depth.     

The Old Man & the Gun

Robert Redford was a virtual anti-Brando. You didn’t go to Redford for raw fury or bared soul, but there was a quiet command in his golden looks, his sculpted assurance, his engaging guy-ness. Now 82, his face a crinkled weather map of sun exposure, he still has his bone structure, his great smile and his wry, infallible charm. Playing bank robber Forrest Tucker (no, not the big, hearty studio actor and totem of dinner theater), Redford is impeccably at home in David Lowery’s The Old Man & the Gun, based on a 2003 New Yorker piece by David Grann.

This is not an old star’s glory like The Straight Story (Richard Farnsworth), The Two of Us (Michel Simon), The Late Show (Art Carney) or Lucky (Harry Dean Stanton). Still, it’s an enjoyable Bob Redford movie, as Tucker robs banks with a light touch (just showing his smile and pistol) in the 1980s. He was a real guy (1920-2004), since his teen years a crook and escape artist (17 successful breakouts, including once from San Quentin via kayak). Tom Waits and Danny Glover are like two soft shoes as his backup buddies, and as the Texas cop tracking him down Casey Affleck uses his gentle, slow-drag voice as if anticipating old age.

The best (no surprise) is Sissy Spacek. As Jewel, an aging horse lover and smart but not pushy sweetheart, she gets dapper, gracious Forrest to consider retirement. She and Redford are paired aces, even in the creaky scene of them rocking on a porch, chewing some sunset wisdom. The heists are almost endearing, with frisky chases, and we snatch glimpses of young Bob in photos and The Chase (also Warren Oates in Two Lane Blacktop). This picture may have AARP bones, but it sure beats meditating on Golden Pond with Norman and Ethel, waiting for the loons.

SALAD (A List)

Robert Redford’s Ten Best Starring Movies
In my esteemed opinion (with director and year):

1. All the President’s Men (Alan J, Pakula, 1976), 2. The Candidate (Michael Ritchie, 1972), 3. Brubaker (Stuart Rosenberg, 1980), 4. Downhill Racer (Michael Ritchie, 1969), 5. The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973), 6. The Hot Rock (Peter Yates, 1972), 7. This Property is Condemned (Sydney J. Pollack, 1966), 8. The Old Man & the Gun (above), 9. The Horse Whisperer (Redford, 1998) and 10. Jeremiah Johnson (Sydney J. Pollack, 1972).

WINE (Vin Orsonaire de Chateau Welles)

Rumors long circulated about whether publisher W.R. Hearst and famed paramour Marion Davies ever saw Citizen Kane, partly based on them. Respected Hollywood columnist Jim Bacon said Davies “once told me that she and W.R. saw the famous Orson Welles movie seven or eight times. She said ‘Once we even went into a theater in San Francisco, ate popcorn, and watched it with an audience. W.R. loved it, and we laughed at the reference to Rosebud.’ Then she told me that Rosebud was Hearst’s pet name for her genitalia.” Now that’s gossip! (Quote from Harlan Lebo’s Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker’s Journey.)

ENTRÉE (Starlight Rising)

When the unreleased The Producers hit the screen at Paul Mazursky’s small, private “sneak” on Jan. 13, 1968, “Peter Sellers began convulsing with laughter. At the end he phoned Embassy Pictures head Joe Levine in New York, declaring Mel Brooks’s comedy (which Levine had pegged a dud) the funniest movie ever made. Soon Sellers placed trade ads to herald ‘the ultimate film, the essence of all great comedy combined in a single motion picture … a largesse of lunacy with sheer magic.” Sellers’s giddy gladness rescued the movie from the era’s discard pile.” (From the Zero Mostel/ The Producers chapter of my book Starlight Rising: Acting Up in Movies, available from Amazon, Nook and Kindle.)

DESSERT (An Image)

A great movie image is more than a still, it’s a distillation.

Robert Redford as novice pol Bill McKay with wife Nancy (Karen Carlson) in The Candidate (Warner Bros., 1972; director Michael Ritchie; cinematographer Victor J. Kemper).

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