The Rescue (2021): Another Astounding Film from the "Free Solo" Team

You may remember the heartrending human drama that captured the world’s attention a few years ago – in the summer of 2018, when a Thai soccer team and their young coach became trapped somewhere in a labyrinthine cave system known as the Tham Luang caves..  Assuming they knew the way out (doubtful), the kids were stuck because monsoon season was underway, and the caves were rapidly flooding. Many of the passages were fully underwater. Any chance of exit was blocked. Oh, and they were in pitch-black darkness.

An international rescue effort was mounted, and the story was all over the news. The exact whereabouts of the children and whether they were even alive was unknown, but the world took notice and hoped. The Rescue is the fascinating, largely untold story of what happened at the Tham Luong caves.   Even if you followed the news at the time, you don’t know the half of it! 

As the title suggests, the film focusses on the remarkable rescue effort – an unbelievable technical and humanitarian undertaking: a team that eventually comprised more than ten thousand people, professionals and volunteers, coming together to try and save these children. What it must have been like to be one of the stranded kids, whose ages ranged from eleven to sixteen – that story is largely left for another time [Ron Howard’s upcoming drama on the Tham Luong cave rescue, slated for release in 2022, may tackle that aspect to some degree], but it takes little imagination to understand how scary and difficult it must have been or them.  

The Rescue was directed and co-produced by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, with the backing of National Geographic Films.  This is the team that brought us the two absolutely incredible adventure documentaries: Meru (2015) and Free Solo (2018). Both feature brilliant, awe-inspiring photography and deep dives into the obsessive commitment and personal courage of their protagonists.  

Meru tells the story of three world-class mountain climbers, Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin, and Renan Ozturk, who are determined to be the first to summit one of the most difficult ascents in the Himalayas – the previously unconquered central “shark’s fin” section of Meru Peak [21,000 feet] – despite personal catastrophes, including a near fatal injury [skull fracture and crushed vertebrae] suffered by Ozturk just a few months before the climb. Along the way, we are provided with candid, insightful, behind the scenes glimpses into the lives and families of these guys, trying to explain why they risk their lives doing such incredibly dangerous things.

Free Solo, winner of 2019 Academy Award for best documentary feature film, is a 
different kind of climbing story – this time about the remarkable rock-climbing icon, Alex Honnold and his seemingly bonkers infatuation with “free solo” climbing of impossible rock walls – which is to say climbing without ropes or harnesses or other protective equipment. Like the adventurers in Meru, Honnold is a very careful, meticulous planner – aiming to reduce, as much as possible, any unnecessary risks; but his infatuation is nevertheless with innately risky activities in which one mistake means death. Free Solo focusses on Honnold’s attempt to accomplish something never done before: a free solo climb of the 3,200 foot vertical rock face of El Capitan cliff in Yosemite National Park. Crazy? Yes, but absolutely breathtaking.

Both Meru and Free Solo are very special, great pictures: lucid, enthralling and in the lengthy climbing scenes astonishingly beautiful.  You don’t need to have a penchant for mountain climbing, adventure documentaries, or films about athletic accomplishment to enjoy them. My wife, for example, a person not naturally drawn to such fare, was completely taken with both these films. 

The same goes for The Rescue – which is a bit of a divergence for the Chin/Vasarhelyi team in that it is about an unplanned event, not a personal quest for accomplishment or recognition. But like the two earlier films, the focus here is twofold: examining and trying to understand the mindset of people who are drawn to extremely high-risk activities; and taking us along with some of the most talented practitioners of such as they do something truly extraordinary. In this case – risking their lives to save a bunch of kids against impossible odds.

The movie begins at a point when the twelve boys and their young coach have already been missing for a day or two in the caves. It has been raining quite hard and large portions of the caves have already filled with water. The system is miles long and the whereabouts of the lost group is not known. There is no way to communicate with them.  Local and national authorities have mobilized for an all-out rescue attempt.  The elite Thai Navy Seals are on scene but they soon have to acknowledge that they do not have the expertise or equipment to navigate a complex, pitch-black, flooded cave like this. Eventually two of the Seals will die in the effort. 

British ex-pat Vernon Unsworth, a financial broker and avid caver, happened to live nearby.  Unsworth had been exploring these caves for years and was an expert on the maze-like network of tunnels. He was also trusted by the locals and became a consultant for the rescue operation. As a sort-of de facto project coordinator, Unsworth suggests bringing in elite cave divers to try and find the missing children.  [Cave Divers? Yep, it’s a thing. Highly technical scuba diving in underwater or flooded caves for science, or rescue, or as an extreme sport. ]

Initially three of the best are brought in: first, Australian Richard “Harry” Harris, an anaesthetist by trade; then two Englishmen: Rick Stanton, formerly a fireman, now a cave rescue specialist called by some “one of the world’s most accomplished cave-divers”;  and John Volanthen, also a cave-diver rescue specialist, whose day job is as an IT/medical electronics consultant. Technically, these guys are amateurs; all are middle aged; outside a small circle of specialists, all are unknowns. But they are the best in the world for this kind of operation.

At first, Harris, Stanton and Volanthen are pessimistic about the task of finding, much less rescuing the lads. The conditions in the cave are impossible. The way in is too long, too treacherous, too labyrinthine; and the chances the boys will even be alive, if found, is too unlikely to justify the risk involved. By now, assuming they aren’t drowned, they’ve been in there for a week, wet, possibly up to their necks in water, without proper clothing or shelter, without food, in a cavern so dark, as Volanthen said, you can’t even see your hand in front of your face. Also, no one even knows where they are! 

And yet, they persevere. 

Meanwhile, outside, it is a scene. There are klieg lights, cameras, cables, generators, ambulances, trucks, helicopters – you name it. There are also water pumps pumping tens of thousands of gallons of water out of the caves and down the hill, to try and keep the water level inside from rising further. And thousands of people gathered there:  scurrying, digging, reporting, praying – Thai military and international advisors, civil authorities, police, the press, parents and relatives of the missing, medical personnel, volunteers from around the world. 

On the 9th day of the boys’ captivity, and eight days of searching,  at the end of a complicated two and a half hour mostly underwater journey of twists and turns,  squeezing through tight places, crawling through low places, Stanton and Volanthen surface in a small chamber to find all the kids and their coach, thirteen in all, perched on a narrow ledge – alive!! It is an amazing moment - a miracle really.  All Stanton can do as his headlight shines on the shivering gaggle of happy, relieved kids is to say to himself over and over “believe, believe”. 

When word gets out that the group has been found alive – well, you can imagine!

The story is told with incredible on-the-scene footage of the search effort - much of which never been seen before. Plus there is some very helpful 3-D animated depictions of the cave layout and the paths that the divers had to take in their search for the missing, effectively showing us the length and complexity of the cave system and the physical difficulties the divers were confronted with. There are carefully placed after-the-fact interviews with the key rescuers, explaining how and why they got into cave-diving in the first place (very interesting stuff) and what was going through their minds on the scene; and, I’m told, a few well integrated reenactments  to keep the narrative flowing. 

But finding the half-starved kids, difficult as that was. Is not the end of the story. It’s just the middle. The question of how to extract them, i.e. bring them out alive, was, if anything, a bigger and even more impossible challenge. Remember, it took the most experienced cave-diving rescuers in the world two and a half hours just to reach the kids, using highly technical equipment and a lifetime of experience.  How will they get these thirteen weakened, completely inexperienced young people out through that two mile underwater obstacle course? There’s no time for training them. If anyone panics, they’d be done-for and might endanger the rescuers. Is there even equipment suitable for pint sized kids? Etc.

A solution is eventually proposed but it is, by all accounts, pretty woo-woo crazy. No one likes it.  But it is the only possible extraction idea anyone can think of. I’ll say no more because you have to see it to  believe it.

It is hard to imagine a documentary constructed any better than this – taut, succinct, intelligible, emotionally and intellectually engaging, and thrilling.  When you get right down to it, The Rescue is a more than an adventure. It’s a story of altruism and incredible heroism. And it’s a feel-good story of the world coming together to try and do something noble and good. Helping people.

        [Mercifully, The Rescue contains no reference whatsoever to Elon Musk’s unsolicited offer to design and build a high-tech submarine to help navigate the caves, nor to his subsequent foot-in-mouth response when his proposal of “help” was rejected.] 

Highly recommended!

1 hour 47 minutes         Rated: PG

Grade: A

Currently screening at the Mill Valley Film Festival in the SF Bay Area; also showing at a few select theaters in New York and Los Angeles as of October 8, 2021. In wide release beginning October 15.