Movie theaters would have been wise to include Dramamine along with tickets purchased for Free Solo. Nausea-inducing in the most spectacular way, the documentary chronicles rock climber Alex Honnold's rope-less ascent in 2017 of Yosemite's El Capitan, a vertical cliff face twice the height of the Empire State Building.

The feat, widely considered the greatest in the history of rock climbing, required years of preparation. Free Solo takes viewers into that process and ultimately right alongside Honnold for the climb itself, which was filmed from multiple angles. It is impossible not to look away from dizzying shots of Honnold spidering his way up the cliff — including a section 1,800 feet high called the "Boulder Problem," more or less a glass-flat granite wall. The risk of death becomes a meta-narrative.

"We asked ourselves about the ethics of doing this," says Chai Vasarhelyi, who directed the film with her husband, the celebrated climber and mountaineer Jimmy Chin (the couple also directed the acclaimed 2015 climbing documentary Meru). "Could we live with ourselves if we enabled [Alex's death]? It came down to the film itself being about a life well-lived. Alex has made a very conscious choice to do what he loves."

That choice, of course, has consequences, especially for those close to him. Much of the documentary explores that idea through a portrait of Honnold's relationship with his girlfriend Sanni McCandless, who emerges as both an accomplice and a foil in his adventure. In that way, the film is almost as much a meditation on love as it is an unflinching depiction of a mind-boggling athletic achievement.