Stream It Or Skip It?

Soulsville, in South Memphis, Tenn., is the neighborhood where soul music’s sense of expression and struggle was born. Today, it’s also informed by hardship, poverty, and street violence. In the Hulu docuseries Memphis to the Mountain, we’re introduced to Memphis Rox, a nonprofit climbing gym and community center built in Soulsville for exactly these reasons. Directed and produced by Zachary Barr, Mountain also introduces us to a team of climbers, Rox regulars from the neighborhood, who will use their climbing wall training and supportive spirit to take on an incredible challenge: climbing Mount Kenya, which at over 17,000 feet is the second-highest peak on the African continent.    

MEMPHIS TO THE MOUNTAIN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: “One year after filming this documentary, Jarmond Johnson, one of the people you are about to meet, was tragically shot and killed in South Memphis.” Memphis to the Mountain is dedicated to Johnson, who was working at Memphis Rox last June when he was killed. 

The Gist: Gun violence reaching through the front doors of Memphis Rox is tragic, but it’s also the express reason the gym was founded, as a safe space for anyone in the neighborhood to enjoy. For Mike Lee, 19, the welcome he felt was immediate. “I was like, mind blown,” Lee says in Memphis to the Mountain. Without a parental presence in his life, Lee left high school, and was living on the streets. Joining Rox, he found community, and the help to face his fear of heights on the climbing walls. 

And now Mike’s a member of a team that will train to take on an obstacle far outside Memphis, but still representative of their everyday challenges. Led by Rox co-founder Chris Dean, the group includes Lee, Quinton Onidas, Brittany Luckett, DJ Johnson, Isaiah Henderson, Pei Lin, Jojo Brown, and Jarmond Johnson. And to prepare for Africa, they’ll take two trips. First to Colorado, and an immersive outdoor experience with veteran climber and educator Phil Henderson, and then to Las Vegas, where they’ll climb with Alex Honnold. A big wall legend, Honnold was profiled in the Academy Award-winning documentary Free Solo.

“The road for a Black man or Black woman won’t be paved where you go.” To the Rox climbers, Chris Dean is an encouraging presence. But he also strives to highlight how the challenges inherent to the practice are representative of journeys through life. In Mountain, Mike, Quinton, and Jarmond all describe what the Rox experience fostered within them. “Lotta people don’t understand why the fuck I climb,” Jarmond says in a cutaway interview. (He shows off tats from his days in a gang.) “It’s healthy for your mind, healthy for your soul.” 

It can also be hard as hell. In Colorado, hiking with Henderson, the Rox team is beset with issues of endurance and altitude acclimation. Basically, they get their asses kicked, and it’s nowhere near the elevation they’ll face on the technical summits of Mount Kenya. As they continue to train at Memphis Rox, We get a sense of what’s to come for the group from Peter Naituli, a mountain guide in Africa. Mount Kenya, he says, is the true challenge for mountaineers. The Rox climbers are tough people who’ve been through a lot. But in Africa, they’ll be facing “toughness born from nature.”

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Lots of climbing stuff to choose from here, if you’re looking for inspiration or vistas or…Jason Momoa? In The Climb, Momoa is on hand to lead a reality competition series featuring expert climbers. Here to Climb is a detailed documentary profile of pro rock climber Sasha DiGulian. Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa also gets at the emotion, drive, and dedication of climbing as a lifelong pursuit. 

And in another interesting angle to Memphis to the Mountain, we meet Memphis Rox co-founder Tom Shadyac in the docuseries, director of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Nutty Professor, Liar Liar, and others. Inspired to give back, Shadyac got the original funding for Rox off the ground. He also wrote and directed a documentary of his own, I Am, about his journey toward healing and philanthropy. It’s available to stream on Prime Video.  

Our Take: It’s not emphasized. Like the rhythm section on a classic cut of soul music, you might not even notice it at first. But even when Memphis to the Mountain brings its central group of climbers out of South Memphis and all the way to the sunlit mesas of Cortez, Col., it lays in a bed of lightly funky Hammond organ soul. That quiet urgency on the soundtrack is illustrative of the tone in this docuseries, which respects the backgrounds of its profiled subjects as much as it pushes them to uncertain places. And we were inspired by the honesty in their personal assessments. Sure, Quinton Onidas says. He used substances. He sold drugs. He was a part of violence in Memphis’s streets. But now he’s on the side of a mountain in Colorado, humping a pack, breathing hard, but still listening for the birds and the wind. “I’m just trying to be great, that’s all.” It happens to be climbing that brought him to this, and Mountain is great at showing how this team looks out for each other as they train and prepare. But it could have been anything that became part of the inspiration. And that goes for any of us.

That encouraging spirit aside, we’re also looking forward to the visuals in this docuseries – Mount Kenya itself looks imposing, impossible, and incredibly awesome – as well as more of its sense of the impossible. A few early teasers feature the team already at altitude in Africa. (“I don’t even know what elevation we at. It’s high as fuck, though.”) Teamwork is great when you’re in a harness in the gym in your neighborhood. But who’s got the juice for a climb in difficult conditions, where the very oxygen you’re breathing keeps being stolen away? Don’t tell us you didn’t feel both terrified and inspired watching Everest. Memphis to the Mountain brings those feelings down to a neighborhood level, a personal one, where we meet individuals in a community who decide to try and be better by facing fears, helping others. Maybe it doesn’t work, but to do the thing has value. Seeking footholds and handholds toward positive change.

Sex and Skin: None but for the awe of human movement. There are a few moves the Rox climbers make on the gym’s walls – legs impossibly stretched, totally inverted hangs – where you will join us in saying “Goddamn.”

Parting Shot: “In Memphis,” Mike Lee says, “It’s not mountains and hills here. It’s a lot of gun violence – there’s murders everywhere. You never know when something’s gonna happen.” 

Sleeper Star: The core crew of Memphis Rox climbers in Mountain are immediately inspiring. They are a cross-section of ages and genders and backgrounds, coming together as a mutually supportive team. It’s a dynamic made more evident, more vital, each time Jarmond Johnson appears in the docuseries. 

Most Pilot-y Line: Chris Dean, co-founder of Memphis Rox: “People used to tell me, ‘Rock climbing is for white folks. That’s white folks shit!’ And I was like, ‘This is your shit. This is here for you.’ The culture of rock climbing fits Black culture. The love, the care, the motivation, the conversation – it’s perfect for a Black community.”

Our Call: STREAM IT! Memphis to the Mountain is an inspired look into a tight-knit group of individuals working together toward a common goal. It’s tough to climb a huge rock face in Africa; there’s no guarantee any of them will make it. But the fact that they’re doing it speaks to the reason for their gym’s Soulsville founding. 

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.