Progression is the new climbing flick from Big Up Productions. You can read Dave MacLeod’s review here. The film touches on some of the recent developments in how the climbers at the forefront are approaching the sport, but it really is just another ‘climbing porn’ DVD. What it did manage to do was highlight the ever growing distinctions between the different facets of climbing; How detached competition sport climbing is from Scottish winter climbing. They’re not even the same sport; it’s like saying football and rugby are the same sport because they are both played on a horizontal pitch and you use your legs. Maybe it’s my experience of trad climbing and my diet of shiny, polished climbing porn videos which have blocked my view of the true investment made at the forefront of climbing. I would have preferred a film which looked at the sacrifices, both physical, emotional and social involved in competition climbing. The huge sums of money and time involved, and the heartache and ultimate sacrifice which is inevitable at the other end of the climbing scale. Yes the film showed potential death falls and climbs up to 5.15b(!), but there is a lot more to climbing than falls and grades. Maybe I’m a bit biased to the form of climbing I’ve been brought up on, but if you want a real insight into where climbing is really being pushed to, check out E11 or Echo Wall, where Hot Aches and Claire MacLeod show how deeply and eternally affecting climbing can be. Like no other book, Psychovertical by Andy Kirkpatrick delves very, very deep into his sacrifices and other’s in his pursuit of climbing. I’ve got to admit though, is this really at the forefront of the evolution of climbing, or haven’t people been sacrificing their lives and the happiness of others for hundreds of years? Maybe a 5.15 rather than a 5.14 is the more important factor here?
