Dean Potter, The Fall of a Wizard

Dean Potter is portrayed in an excellent documentary mini-series. A tortured character, with undeniable talent and an overflowing ego.Image: Andy Anderson/HBO

Dean Potter was a tightrope walker, an outstanding climber with a bulky ego. But the man was above all prey to stubborn demons. This is the dazzling story of The Dark Wizard.

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It’s about a fall and a dream that ends badly. Through four episodes (broadcast from April 14 to May 5 on HBO) the documentary mini-series by Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen follows the trajectory of a man who made the void his territory. A physical, existential, dizzying void. The one that the mountain dweller frail, that the elite climber seeks, and that the wingsuiter ends up embracing, this ultra dangerous activity which consists of flying with a suit

Falling, facing the unknown: this was, in his own words, what motivated Dean Potter. This desire to confront death, to touch it with your fingertips before retreating – or not.

The two directors strive to define the character without ever falling into a hagiographic portrait. It’s a real discovery: a direct link with a legend who sank into his delusions of speed and records, into his immoderate taste for risk. We think of mountaineers of the caliber of Ueli Steck, also obsessed with summits and stopwatches, with this irrepressible desire to conquer the mountains as quickly as possible.

Ueli Steck (right) died on the slopes of Nuptse, Nepal.Image: KEYSTONE

To understand Potter, we must trace. We see him beat the speed record on the 914 meters of El Capitan in Yosemite, complete solo ascents – without rope – on virgin routes, practice freeBASE on the Eiger, this method that he himself developed: climbing without protection while wearing a reserve parachute. We see him walking barefoot on ropes stretched between two ledges, and flying in a wingsuit close to the walls to get closer to his totem animal: the crow.

Dean Potter is crazy. But he is much more than an extreme athlete: he is a spiritual being, who breathes when he dances around death.

The Dark Wizard dwells on this temptation of free soloing (climbing without the slightest security) and on what it reveals about a man with an immense ego and a controversial reputation. We then see Alex Honnold trot out in the story: star climber, Oscar winner for the documentary Free Soloit embodies both a rivalry and a source of mutual inspiration. Between the two men, a tension which frames Potter’s personality, pushes him to his limits.

Friends speak out during the 4 episodes. They evoke inner conflicts, spiritual questions, physical exploits. A raven among the vultures in Potter’s head. A man who longs to shine, and who pays the price: friendships that fade, relationships that fade away, a loneliness that sets in, a paranoia, sometimes, that takes over.

Behind the hunt for records, the documentary lays bare what is silently gnawing at Potter: a deep depressive statethe real common thread of the series. The film is grueling, fully so through its staging, through its images which remain for a long time, through this feeling of accompanying a man capable of the worst as well as the best, always on the edge of the abyss.

Dean Potter was drawn to emptiness.Image: Eric Perlman/HBO

Dancing around the void, on his wire, with his artificial wings, with his flexible exploits on the rock walls, Dean Potter is a sad man, eaten away by his multiple inner demons.

He also has this sentence, during an interview:

Amidst the exploits, there is a test: finding peace. He was getting close, but the shadow wizard who dreamed of himself as a crow, crashed during his last big jump, hitting a wall head-on, in 2015, during a wingsuit flight in Yosemite. He was 43 years old.

Behind this unique trajectory, the story delivers a poignant portrait of someone who has been flayed alive. Dean Potter will remain an icon, mythologized by his exploits as much as by his excesses. The champion’s ransom.

“The Dark Wizard” can be seen in its entirety on HBO.