Marc-André Leclerc is a young Canadian climber who goes up huge, icy mountains alone, often with no rope. Filmmakers try to follow him in Canada and Patagonia, but he slips away because he thinks a real solo climb needs no one watching. The film is tense and quiet. It is about risk, pure love of climbing, and living far from fame. It ends with a real tragedy after he goes missing on a climb in Alaska.
The story stays on Leclerc’s skill, his shy nature, and his bond with his girlfriend and fellow climber, Brette Harrington. Viewers see hard ice climbs, his tent life in the woods, and talk from other climbers like Alex Honnold and Reinhold Messner. The main ideas are freedom, focus, and how far someone will go for a dream. Normal viewers would notice thrills, solitude, and loss—not modern identity or social-justice messaging.
Community feedback
Was our 0% Woke rating accurate?
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for The Alpinist.
Woke representation / casting
Real people appear as themselves. The cast is climbers and family in a sports documentary, not scripted roles filled for identity signals or quotas.
0%
Woke political dialogue
Talk is about climbing alone, fear, pure style, and daily life. No clear activist or identity lectures for the audience.
0%
Identity-driven story themes
The film is about skill, solitude, risk, love of mountains, and grief. Identity politics and modern social-justice arcs are not the story.
0%
Western institutional / cultural critique
He lives simple and off the grid and avoids fame, which fits old climbing “dirtbag” culture. That is not a modern activist attack on Western institutions, patriarchy, or similar framing.
0%
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant. It is a documentary about a real person, not a remake that rewrites a known fictional character for ideology.
0%
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
No solid anti-woke or right-leaning campaign treating this film as woke, DEI, or identity propaganda was found.
0%
Creator track record context
Key directors and producers have low cached activist scores and are known for adventure and sports docs, not identity-driven work.
0%
Production
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