Progression
Producer Big Up Productions
Reviewed byEd Douglas
DateThursday, 10 December 2009
Rating
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If you want to know what it takes to be one of the best rock climbers in the world in 2009, then Progression is an excellent place to start. There's no angle here, no quirky sense of fun, or philosophical enquiry, just a series of encounters with some of the best climbers in the world doing their thing. Think Crank, without the love interest.
We have Chris Sharma hanging out near his home in Lleida, working his way through some of the hardest sport routes in the world's leading sport-climbing area, like Pachamama and Demencia Senil, the great man's new 9a+ at Margalef. Next up, the Basque machine Patxi Usobiaga is our guide through the inferno of modern competition climbing. "My talent is being a masochist," he says, and after watching him train, I'd have to agree. "Climbing is easy. Competitions are complex and intense."
The pace of the film picked up for this section, and grew in interest too. There was a sense of enquiry about Big Up's approach to competitions, which was lacking from other parts of the film, perhaps because it's outside their usual comfort zone. It was fascinating to watch climbing morph into something deeply regulated and competitive, like vertical tennis. There was even a tennis dad, bringing his fifteen-year-old daughter Johanna Ernst to her first World Cup season, which she duly wins, ahead of Slovenian ace Maja Vidmar, and in front of Ojeda's home crowd too.
A talking head from competition climbing's governing body claimed that only the competition circuit can reveal who is the best climber in the world. I guess that would depend on how you define 'best'. It wasn't my thing, but I appreciated being told about so effectively.
I was more in tune with the world of Kevin Jorgeson, a highball bouldering specialist from Bishop, California. With soloing superstar Alex Honnold and Matt Segal, these three formed a nightmarish Team America who skip up the hardest routes on gritstone, having taken the 1990s classic Hard Grit as encouragement, not a warning. Jonnold's solo of both Gaia and Meshuga, routes with meaty reputations even now, is phenomenal. Niall Grimes, no doubt brought in for that zany British humour that the Irish do so well, can only acknowledge to camera that UK rock climbing might be a tad off the pace.
Back in Bishop Jorgeson completes his huge solo project Ambrosia after four years of effort on the Grandpa Peabody boulder in the Buttermilks. California after the Peak District was like being back with the elves after getting pissed with the hobbits in the Shire.
Next up, Tommy Caldwell points the way to what the future may hold on Yosemite's big walls, rattling off a free ascent of Magic Mushroom and working on his own outlandish project. This section offered some outstanding footage, but it was Caldwell's slightly other demeanour that caught my interest most strongly. While his mates are shut inside their portaledge, escaping a snowy day, Caldwell is putting in another shift on his project.
You watch Caldwell looning around on a vast dyno forever above the ground, the stump of his left index finger reminding me that he lost the rest of it to a circular saw, and you wonder about him. In the hands of a different film-making team, Caldwell would make for a fascinating profile. "I don't know what's wrong with me," he says, "but I love this shit."
Finally, we're returned safely to Sharma, working on his project Jumbo Love at Clark Mountain, at 5.15b one of the very hardest routes around and fresh off the conveyor. You feel for his belayer, girlfriend Daila Ojeda, when he finally completes it, amid the usual Sharma grunting. (What is it with the grunting?) It was impressive, even incredible, but I have to say, in my head was Jorgesen's comment from the start of the movie: "I prefer climbs to have a consequence."
It's tempting when reviewing hardcore climbing films to review not the film itself but the climbers in them, and the routes they climb. Progression scores big on the names and numbers. It also has outstanding climbing footage and tells its story as efficiently as Sharma catches a hold. If you're only casually interested in the state of the rock climbing art, however, there's less to hold your attention.
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