Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Marc-André Leclerc, an exceptional climber, has made solo his religion and ice his homeland. When filmmaker Peter Mortimer begins his film, he places his camera at the base of a British Columbia cliff and waits patiently for the star climber to come down to answer his questions. Marc André, a little uncomfortable, prefers to return to the depths of the forest where he lives in a tent with his girlfriend Brette Harrington. In the heart of winter, Peter films vertiginous solos on fragile ice. He tries to make appointments with the climber who is never there and does not seem really concerned by this camera pointed at him "For me, it would not be a solo if there was someone else" . Marc-André is thus, the "pure light" of the mountaineers of his time, which marvel Barry Blanchard, Alex Honnold or Reinhold Messner, interviewed in the film. An event film for an extraordinary character.
The Alpinist is a remarkable documentary elevated by extraordinary cinematography of terrifying vertical terrain and a genuinely singular subject in Marc-André Leclerc, whose almost pathological aversion to the camera paradoxically makes the film more compelling. The footage of solo alpine climbing—often captured without Leclerc's knowledge or cooperation—is viscerally stunning and unlike most climbing docs. Novelty scores high because Leclerc himself is a one-of-a-kind figure, and the film's central tension (documenting someone who refuses to be documented) gives it a distinctive structure. Cinematography earns a 4 for the sheer audacity and beauty of the mountain footage. Plot and Acting (in the documentary sense—subject candor, interview depth) are solid but not exceptional; the narrative arc is somewhat conventional for the genre. The ending is poignant given Leclerc's fate but arrives with a restrained, understated quality that feels appropriate rather than cinematically powerful.