New Film About Jamie Logan Explores the Legendary Alpinist’s Transition
The film opens on a beige backdrop and the sound of paper pages being flipped, then quickly cuts to Jamie Logan, sitting in a picturesque meadow with the sun at high noon. Her voice is steady and firm as she reads aloud a four-decade-old article from Climbing Magazine. “I wrote [this] in 1979,” she said—then, without pause, “the Emperor Face, by Jim Logan.”
You will find no sweeping mountain panoramas or harrowing whippers in Darcy Hennesey’s new climbing film Jamie. Centered around pioneering alpinist Jamie Logan’s coming of age story at 69, Hennesey captures the inner monologue of Logan’s self-realization as she navigates a community of climbers who are often under-experienced and under-equipped to grapple with the fluidity of gender. The film is also a portrait of a marriage: Logan’s decades-long (and ongoing) relationship with her wife, the artist Sherry Wiggins.
The story jumps between three timelines of Logan’s life. It begins with her paradigm-shifting first ascent of the Emperor Face (VI 5.9 A2; 2,500m) on Mt. Robson, in the Canadian Rockies, as Logan reads through passages of her article and lets loose a stream of consciousness about their barely adequate homemade equipment. (Steve House and Colin Haley repeated the crux pitch of her route decades later and called in M8 with modern tools and protection.)
Mid-climb, and mid-article, the film cuts to Logan’s life as “Jim,” before expressing her true self. Flipping through old family albums, Wiggins touches a photo lightly with her fingertips. “This is Jamie’s sixtieth birthday. Which we did a surprise thing for her,” her tone drops into a quiet sorrow, “she was still a him then.” She thinks Jamie looks uncomfortable in those pictures.
The scenes of Logan’s life now are shot in her home, in the climbing gym training, and at her local crag of the Flatirons in Boulder, Colorado. We sneak a peek into her closet, where she and her wife discuss the many dresses they own. This one is the sparkly one. That one is the librarian dress. And that one once belonged to Wiggins, but she didn’t like it, so it’s Logan’s now. They laugh quietly and talk to each other more than they do the camera. Wiggins, through Logan’s transition, begins to feel more empowered herself and becomes more daring through her art.
Logan talks about her fears, that she would “wreck” her kids with the transition, and “blow up” her marriage. She talks about growing up in Texas, forever fearful that someone would discover her secret and her life would be ruined. The camera is behind her as Logan looks at a map of southeastern states in a mess of red, the states with the most restrictions on gender affirming care for youths. The red there feels more symbolic than a political leaning. Foreboding, like the red on a stop sign or warning label. As she turns to face the camera again, her voice is choked, and tears are visible.
Logan’s gender dysphoria had become a matter of survival when she finally went to therapy. There is a deep finality in her tone when Logan talks about this. Suicide rate and suicidal tendencies among the transgender community is considerably higher compared to the general population. When Logan transitioned, she lost her main climbing partner partly due to his “discomfort,” but she does not elaborate on how it makes her feel.
The film continuously leaves the viewer wanting more. It is rare that films are too short, but, at just 17 minutes, this one is. It promises a daring and emotional open exploration of Jamie’s emergence, and we are invited to look—but only from a distance. Perhaps it is a part of Hennesey’s directorial aesthetic, because she is no stranger to making films with a nucleus of vulnerability like The Motherhood Penalty and North Shore Betty. We must also grapple with the impenetrability of human emotion. Even for those with the privilege of understanding their gender identity at birth, we spend a lifetime trying to figure out who we are. It is impossible not to wonder about how she coped with the grief of losing climbing partners, or the fear of coming out to her children. We each fight our own wars against the trappings of society’s gender expectations, and we want to ask Logan: how did you do it?
But who are we to ask for more from Jamie?
In a media roundtable in July, 2023, I asked Logan how watching the movie for the first time made her feel. Logan continued to speak in a steady, firm voice, telling me she thought it was emotional, and powerful, and representative of the trials, trauma, and successes of escaping gender norms. Logan also says Hennesey did not make a climbing movie, but a love story about her and her wife.
No—it is quintessentially a climbing film because climbing stories naturally lead to a narrative arc. Hennesey has shown the approach, the crux pitches, and the summit of Logan’s story—I’m wondering how to get down.
Lighthearted music fades in near Jamie’s end, and Wiggins lights a million candles atop a chocolate cake. Unlike the family photos from earlier showing a large family, it is only the two of them in the house. Wiggins plants a kiss soft on Logan’s cheek, and it cuts back to the meadow.
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