You’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t remember the dramatic 2018 rescue of a young Thai soccer team trapped in a flooded cave in northern Thailand. It garnered widespread international attention, and people across the globe waited with bated breath over eighteen days as a collaborative international team brought the twelve boys and their coach to safety in a daring and desperate diving mission.
The Tham Luang cave rescue also caught the attention of filmmakers. The story has been depicted in The Cave (2019), the Jimmy Chin-directed documentary The Rescue (2021), and the upcoming Netflix limited series Thai Cave Rescue.
There’s certainly room for more than one retelling of the gripping saga, particularly when director Ron Howard takes the helm. In Thirteen Lives Howard ambitiously tackles the story from many sides, keen to centre it on the Thai experience while also focusing on the rescue dive led by expert British cave divers Rick Stanton and John Volanthen, played by Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell, respectively.
We begin with the Wild Boars soccer team, watching as they finish practice and head to the cave with their coach. I expected the film to stay with the team a little more in this fictionalized drama to show their perspective, but Howard sticks to the outside, covering the story much the way we watched it unfold on the news albeit with more access and insight into the rescue operation’s key players. We especially see the weight of responsibility on the shoulders of the divers and the Chang Rai governor (played by Sahajak Boonthanakit) as they make tough decisions with uncertain outcomes, such as diving the boys out under anesthetic.
The film employs careful set-up so the audience will understand not only the dangers but the impossibility of some choices. For example, when a worker has to be dived out a short distance, we see how his sudden panic translates to near catastrophe due to his inexperience. The sequence is important because it helps us realize the impossibility of diving the kids out in the same fashion and also the potential complications of the anaesthetic option. It adds tension and brings viewers into the gravity of the situation.
Howard’s realist approach gives the film a gritty, harrowing aesthetic particularly during the underwater scenes. Those who are claustrophobic will have a tough time watching the divers navigate stalactite mazes and tight, murky spaces so narrow the divers can barely squeeze themselves through let alone their equipment and one of the boys.
The scale of production is impressive, as is the set design. Howard was unable to film in Thailand as planned due to the pandemic, so the crew set up in Queensland, Australia and built four 100-feet long tanks in a warehouse to replicate the Tham Luang cave. A skilled team including production designer Molly Hughes, who worked on the expansive sets of the Harry Potter franchise, and celebrated Thai cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (Call Me by Your Name, Suspiria) really brought the details to life.
With much of the narrative focus on Stanton and Volanthen’s diving team (including Joel Edgerton as Dr. “Harry” Harris, the anaesthetist), the film teeters on the edge of a white saviour complex but brings in Thai stories and characters to ground it. The dialogue swings between Thai and English, with the first ten minutes of the film completely in Thai. Pattrakorn Tungsupakul plays the mother of one of the trapped boys, serving as the parent perspective. Nophand Boonyai plays Thanet Natisri, a water engineer from Bangkok who spearheads the water diversion efforts on the mountain with help from scores of volunteers. A local village agrees to sacrifice their crop fields to the water diversion efforts. It proves to play a critical role. The Thai Navy SEAL team endure their own sacrifices to the cause. The Chiang Rai governor navigates the politics and his own uncertain future. And throughout, Thai culture and religious customs are weaved in authentically as important aspects of the community’s experience and the rescue itself.
The downside of Howard’s broad undertaking is that the characters are underserved despite the film’s long run time of 2 hours 29 minutes. There’s so much to cover that there’s not enough room for significant character development, meaning at times the film lacks emotional strength. However, the film offers an enthralling depiction that brings us into the heart of the action while offering new context and information we never learned from the media.
Written by William Nicholson from a story by Nicholson and Don Macpherson, Thirteen Lives is streaming now on Amazon Prime.
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