When 12 Thai boys and their 25 year-old soccer coach were trapped in the Tham Luang cave after a storm flooded it in June 2018, there was a global tightening of muscles. Surely, the most logistically-minded pundits and experts thought, they would not be able to survive under such conditions, and for so many days without food or warmth. But they did. And what became even more compelling than the fact of the rescue was how they were rescued—by a group of highly experienced, middle-aged cave divers, mostly from the U.K., and with the boys and coach purposefully rendered unconscious during their exit from the cave.
Years later, Oscar-winning documentary filmmaking duo and couple Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Free Solo) have taken a filmic deep dive into the events surrounding and leading up to the expedition. With The Rescue, in theaters October 8, Chin and Vasarhelyi try to weave together many hours of previously unseen footage and several talking head interviews with Thai officials, military personnel, and the cave divers themselves. The result is an extremely thorough documentation of events, and a literal one. The Rescue is not so much a film as it is a record.
Chin, a legendary alpine climber and respected photographer, is himself well aware of the physical and mental difficulties of contending with nature as sport. But unlike Free Solo, in The Rescue, the filmic style the pair employs doesn’t convey this expertise. Perhaps the full story of the Thai cave rescue—what with all the technical details about cave diving, the local cultural context, and the many changing conditions throughout the several weeks of strategizing—was always going to be hard to render as a captivating work of art. Yet, in January 2019, the Canadian publication Maclean’s published a riveting long form piece on the rescue by investigative journalist Shannon Gormley that did just that.
Though Gormley’s reporting is profound and pointed, her telling of the events is imaginative and even, at times, risky. She dares to interpret the mindsets of the cave divers she speaks to, giving us a close-third perspective: “Ben is in this cave because of his experience. His experience tells him no amount of experience can beat this cave. Soon more monsoon rains will fall.” These short yet expressive lines carry us through the piece with a profound sense of worry for and also curiosity about everyone involved. When the boys and their coach are rescued, we feel the weight of what the divers have accomplished.
The Rescue, on the other hand, plods along without taking any formal risks. Vasarhelyi and Chin acquired a trove of original and archival footage, yet they don’t do anything exceptional with it. I couldn’t shake the feeling of watching a network TV documentary, designed to feed the audience with detail after detail, but not to generate any significant ideas from the facts and images it contains.
Mainstream documentaries tend to get away with this level of artlessness because they are seen mainly as platforms for information. But it’s a surprise from Vasarhelyi and Chin, who did much to imbue Free Solo with the psychic turmoil and larger-than-life awe surrounding its subject, climber Alex Honnold. Perhaps having a single subject and a narrative hinged on exceptionality helped the filmmakers find an exciting style that time. But with the cave divers and the Thai families and locals praying outside of the cave, there’s a collective intensity to encapsulate. A more diffusive energy, felt the world over at the time of the rescue, roils beneath the surface, but has eluded The Rescue.
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Thai Cave Doc ‘The Rescue’ Is a Disappointing Follow-Up to ‘Free Solo’ - Vanity Fair
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