BURST***Editor’s note: this article may contain spoilers.
If the first episode of The Dark Wizard introduced us to Dean Potter’s fear of falling, the second is all about his obsession with trying to overcome it.
In the next installment of this limited HBO biopic series, which aired on April 21, we see Potter railing against his demons; this time, literally throwing himself off the steepest of monoliths, cliffs and mountains to try to cleanse them from his mind.
This episode is all about Potter’s foray into the world of BASE jumping. It chronicles his introduction to the sport and how it put his already addictive relationship with adrenaline into overdrive.
It also provides a brief exploration of the BASE jumping community, and paints a somewhat unflattering picture, portraying them as addicts always chasing the next high.
One could argue this is a fair assessment of BASE. It’s risky enough to have a site dedicated solely to tracking fatalities, with the last entry being on March 21. But it’s interesting to see this narrative coming from the folks behind Reel Rock, one of climbing’s most beloved film series.
Mainstream outlets have often portrayed climbers as risk-loving adrenaline junkies. Now we see climbing media doing the same to the BASE community. And that’s not to say it’s undeserved; it’s just funny to observe.
There’s also an exploration of how Potter’s past trauma propelled him to seek refuge in activities that put him within a stone’s throw of “the death consequence.”
The way the film tells it, Potter grows up feeling stifled at home by a controlling mother.
Combine that with his parents’ broken marriage, his coming of age as an awkward child, and the fact that he fell off a stone wall at the age of five, and what do you get?
A man driven by recurring nightmares of falling, desperate to FreeBASE his way into a moment of peace.
At this point, it’s perhaps hard to evaluate how we should feel about Potter.
On one hand, it’s clear that he suffered greatly from depression and mental health problems. On the other hand, it does feel like we are dealing with a man drowning in first-world problems. It’s unclear if this was the intended narrative that the filmmakers had, but throughout the episode I was hoping for a bigger reveal into why he was so plagued by demons.
That didn’t arrive. And when it didn’t, it made me feel a little bit less sympathetic towards Potter.
Suburban America, meet your tragic man-child hero.
However, mental health struggles aren’t the only obstacle we see him dealing with.
It’s in this episode that we see his next big adversary in the series: none other than the world’s most famous climber, Alex Honnold.
We start seeing how the competition between Honnold and Potter eventually forced the latter to find new ways to distinguish himself from the world’s greatest free soloist. Honnold, arriving in The Valley to make a name for himself, quickly starts surpassing his childhood hero’s accomplishments as a climber.
Potter, backed into a corner, is forced to come up with new sports where he could be Number 1. FreeBASING (soloing up a route and jumping off with a parachute) is born, and so is highline BASING. Potter nearly kills himself soloing far out of his depth in conditions where a parachuted descent is impossible. But he comes back later, and pulls it off anyway.
It’s a fascinating second episode that draws you in all the more because every moment, you can’t quite decide whether or not you like its main protagonist. And perhaps that is the intended narrative.
The post HBO series charts American free soloist Dean Potter’s foray into BASE jumping – a review appeared first on Gripped Magazine.