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I have a non-spoilery post also. If you've seen it or don't mind spoilers...
I knew almost nothing about this going in. But when Beth Rodden was introduced, her name rang a faint bell. I was still trying to remember what climbing context I'd heard of her in when the ominous music and helicopter sounds started right after Tommy said, "So we went to Kyrgyzstan" and then I suddenly remembered that she was one of several climbers who'd been taken hostage. Only that was all I remembered, so I was biting my fingernails over what actually happened - did one of them get killed?
Of all the people who should not have had to kill someone (or so he thought, and wasn't that a WTF final twist - I really wanted to know if that changed anything for Tommy), Tommy Caldwell has to be at the top. It was 100% justified, and yet the poor guy!
AND THEN HE CUT OFF HIS INDEX FINGER IN A CIRCULAR SAW.
But of all the amazing twists, my favorite was when he decided to go back and wait for Kevin. It was such a beautiful moment, especially since they didn't even know each other before they started the world's most ambitious and intimate climb together. And such a touching parallel to the Kyrgyzstan nightmare, when he also made a choice to risk himself for others.
I knew almost nothing about this going in. But when Beth Rodden was introduced, her name rang a faint bell. I was still trying to remember what climbing context I'd heard of her in when the ominous music and helicopter sounds started right after Tommy said, "So we went to Kyrgyzstan" and then I suddenly remembered that she was one of several climbers who'd been taken hostage. Only that was all I remembered, so I was biting my fingernails over what actually happened - did one of them get killed?
Of all the people who should not have had to kill someone (or so he thought, and wasn't that a WTF final twist - I really wanted to know if that changed anything for Tommy), Tommy Caldwell has to be at the top. It was 100% justified, and yet the poor guy!
AND THEN HE CUT OFF HIS INDEX FINGER IN A CIRCULAR SAW.
But of all the amazing twists, my favorite was when he decided to go back and wait for Kevin. It was such a beautiful moment, especially since they didn't even know each other before they started the world's most ambitious and intimate climb together. And such a touching parallel to the Kyrgyzstan nightmare, when he also made a choice to risk himself for others.
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https://kore.dreamwidth.org/1379326.html
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It's one of the great ironies that the person who is, by all accounts, genuinely one of the nicest people in climbing also Straight-Up Killed A Guy (or thought he had).
The Push is impressively and uncomfortably honest, and even then the big shockers of self-exposure are like "And then I finally sent an e-mail to Kevin which was kind of HARSH and BRUSQUE and said he NEEDED TO TURN UP WHEN HE'D SAID HE WOULD". *gasp*
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https://kore.dreamwidth.org/1379326.html?thread=17311486#cmt17311486
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But truly, the moment he decided that he didn't want to finish without Kevin was just so perfect and beautiful. I can't stop thinking about it.
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https://www.redbull.com/int-en/tv/channel/Climbing
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And my impression is that after the initial trauma, he coped comparatively well with the guilt aspect, presumably because it was so clearly the right thing to have done and vindicated by the outcome (not that this is enough to make people feel not-guilty about things, human brains not being rational, but it probably helped).
In his Enormocast interview, he talked about one difficult thing about the aftermath of Kyrgyzstan being people expecting him to be destroyed by guilt at a point when he ... wasn't, actually. And wondering if he should be acting more visibly "traumatized" to stop people from thinking he was a psychopath.
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Still think it's hilarious to remember commenting on how there were 3 witnesses. There were 3 witnesses THAT HE KNEW OF, lol.
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Yeah, my impression is that he crashed really hard into that initially, but then came to terms with its having been the necessary and right thing to do fairly straightforwardly.
OTOH, I do have the sense that he's kept wondering what inside himself made him capable of doing it when the others weren't, and that he's built it into his self-image in terms of being someone with a particular capacity to keep functioning under extreme conditions.
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(Especially the break-up, where I have the impression that everyone in the Yosemite climbing community knew who she'd cheated on him with.)
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So I went into this film spoiled about: he and some fellow climbers get kidnapped in Kyrgyzstan, they escape somehow, Tommy loses most of a finger and keeps climbing, and that was about it. I did *not* know he pushed the guy, the guy fucking survived omgwtf, or anything about the climbing. Or the relationships, or the kid.
I loved how I couldn't tell whether Kevin was going to make it or not. I really thought they were building up to him making it, but then they made me question myself. And then when he finished pitch 15, I CHEERED! At the screen. :P That was my favorite part.
Tommy dropped his phone, lol.
Loved the scenery, and especially what they did with the time lapse photography of the sky.
I was going to say more and may come back, but sleep deprivation continues, ugh. :/
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Tommy claims to this day that it was an accident, but admits that in the moment when it happened, he was like "NOOOOOOOOOOOO --- oh wait this is awesome."
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And then Kevin does the move that Tommy couldn't do! You can't make this shit up.
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I mean seriously, Kevin can't do the traverse and he can't do it and can't do it and can't do it, and then Tommy has a big EMOTIONAL MOMENT and at the last minute enables him to do it via the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP? Come off it.
(Reality: AND ALSO KEVIN CAN FLYYYYYYYY.)
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And then he just went and fucking dialed it in. I thought, "That has to feel so good after the Traverse."
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http://pit-thinks-link-is-handsome.tumblr.com/post/108522910145/he-craves-that-mineral