THE RESCUE
UK/US, 2021, 107 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi.
This is the second film out of three going back to the rescue of the young football team and their coach, trapped in Thai caves in June-July 2018. The story commanded worldwide media attention at the time, the seeming sad fate of the boys and the seeming impossibility of rescue, the days of endurance in rescuing the boys, and worldwide rejoicing that everyone was saved.
The first film to appear, in 2019, came from Thailand itself, The Cave. It drew on a great deal of newsreel footage from the time, interviews with Thai authority figures, a focus on one of the divers from Ireland, Jim Warny bringing a touch of the personal story to English-speaking audiences. There were some emphases on the logistics in Thailand, especially the difficulties of getting pumps to the site, bureaucracy holding up the use of the pumps. Apart from Warny, there are glimpses of other international divers but little explanation.
By way of contrast the Rescue, while there is focus on the Thai situation and the Thai authorities, their hesitations, politicians, the Thai Navy Seals, the sad death of one of the Seals, the pumping out of the water, a great deal of attention is given to the international divers without whom the operation could not have been carried out.
This film is the work of husband-and-wife team, Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyu, who won an Oscar for their documentary on mountain climbing, Free Solo, and who have collaborated in a number of highly-awarded documentaries. Already, The Rescue has won a number of these awards.
With a longer running time than The Cave, the filmmakers are able to include a vast amount of documentary material from the cave site, within the cave, the rescue, the discussions between the Thai authorities and the divers, the crowds of people at the site, the many media journalists and their reports, and a focus on religious beliefs and Buddhist prayer (there was more more of this background in The Cave).
While there was great cooperation from many quarters in Thailand, and, especially from the United States, a number of American military being interviewed here, ultimately, it was experienced divers from Europe and Australia who brought the boys out.
The Rescue gives the opportunity for interviews with the key divers, British diver living in Thailand, Vernon Undsworth, got in contact with two British divers, Rick Stanton and John Volanthen, cave diving their hobby but with vast experience. It was they who found the boys. Quite some attention is given to the two men, their stories, their personalities, and extensive interviews with them throughout the film. Quite a number of other divers arrived from different countries, also interviewed for the film. The divers are giving their views and memories in retrospect, having had time to come to terms with what had happened. However, there are quite a number of sequences showing them in their work during the rescue period.
An important question was how to bring the boys out, through more than a kilometre and a half of floodwater, often underwater. An Australian surgeon, Richard Harris, was consulted about anaesthetising the boys. His initial opinion was that it could not be done. However, he continued to reflect, came to Thailand, organised the medication and the injections and how to administer them, and, because diving was his hobby, he went into the cave to the boys, coming out last. He is a genial personality and interviews well – and was named Australian of the year 2019. (He admired his father, stories about him and photos, only to find that as he came out of the cave, his father had just died.)
Many audiences may well be wondering how there are such close-ups of the divers in the cave, with the boys, the injections, the boys underwater – with the final credits giving information the some of these scenes were re-enacted by the participants. These re-enactments certainly bring the action to vivid and suspenseful life.
In 2022, Ron Howard’s a drama of the rescue, Thirteen Lives, with Colin Farrell as Rick Stanton, Viggo Mortensen as John Volanthen, Joel Edgerton as Richard Harris, is scheduled for release.
