Embracing life
This post has spoilers for the movie The Alpinist.
Yesterday I watched the Alpinist. Wow, what a great film. Immediately after finishing it, I had to sit alone and just process what I had just watched.
Was Marc-André’s life tragic? This was the question I was thinking about.
The Alpinist is a movie on Marc-André, a mountain climber in his 20’s. A happy-go-lucky, kind, Canadian recluse who loved climbing mountains on-sight (without climbing the mountain ever before) and free solo (without ropes or harnesses). Despite the fact that he didn’t own a cellphone, went off the grid months on end, and actively avoided attention and promotion, he became known in the climbing community for the difficulty of the routes he climbed and the jaw-dropping fearlessness he had to climb free-solo.
Eventually a duo of film directors caught on to his feats, and Marc-André signed a deal to create this film about him, a film he cared little about.
Marc-André would regularly climb mountains thousands of feet in the air, on a route completely unknown to him, without any ropes safety net. If at any point his grip failed, he would die. How could someone put their life in so much danger?
Marc-André didn’t see his time in the mountains as risking his life, he was already grateful for the life he lived so far. And each trek he made out, the more he appreciate the fragile life he lived. Every time before going into the mountains, he would have his ‘last meal’, fully knowing it might be his last.
The mountains reminded him of his place in the world. A tiny speck in the universe. His life like ours are at the mercy of the universe, and we can be taken away at any point. These are truths we all need to accept as humans on the earth. Marc-André wholeheartedly embraced these truths like no other.
Climbing was his ultimate expression of freedom. In that way, Mark-André never saw himself as putting his life in grave danger when he climbed. He was always grateful for what he had already experienced and simply wanted to experience more. To climb mountains and push his abilities to the limit. If he died at the mercy of the mountain because of that, so be it.
So was it cruel that he died while climbing, buried by an avalanche? Do I think his story is tragic? No. While I do feel for his mom and his girlfriend and the grief his passing caused, I think Marc-André truly experienced life and lived to his heart’s desire. His story is beautiful.