The problem with making a successful documentary – commercial success, critical raves, Academy Award – is eventually, you have to make another one. Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s “Free Solo” is one of the great non-fiction films of recent years, a nail-biting extreme sports chronicle with an intimate personality profile nestled firmly inside, Russian doll-style. Perhaps if its follow-up had gone in an entirely different direction, they could’ve sidestepped comparisons. But “The Rescue,” while quite effective overall, cannot help but suffer in comparison.
READ MORE: Telluride 2021 Preview: 10 Must-See Films To Watch
The story they tell is a compelling one: the 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue, in which twelve boys (ages 11 to 16) and one coach from the “Wild Boar” soccer team went exploring in a cave in the Chaing Rai Province in Thailand. They found themselves trapped on the wrong side of water that flooded the cave in an unexpected heavy rainfall, and they had no route out. And monsoon season was about to begin.
Vasarhelyi and Chin begin with the crisis already well underway – a couple of days in, with search teams and local authorities (and weeping parents) in the mud outside the cave entrance. It’s a smart jump-off, raising the pulse of the picture immediately; we’re clear right away on the pressure they were under, the clock that was ticking, the high stakes of this thing.
READ MORE: Fall 2021 Movie Preview: 60+ Must-See Films
One man in the crowd is speaking English: Vern Unsworth, known to the locals as “the crazy foreign caver,” who understands immediately that this is no typical underwater rescue. He advises calling in “the best cave divers in the world”—Rick Stanton and John Volanthen—from the U.K. There is some initial resistance from the Thai government officials and military – these are middle-aged white guys, weekend warriors, hobbyists. But they take the situation seriously, and Vasarhelyi and Chin adroitly immerse the viewer (sometimes literally) into their world – the lingo, conventions, and so on.
READ MORE: Telluride 2021 Lineup Includes ‘King Richard,’ ‘C’mon C’mon,’ ‘Louis Wain’ & More
After several aborted attempts, John and Rick find the entire group, alive and safe. But finding them is only half the battle – perhaps less. They’re so deep into the mostly underwater cave, and so ill-equipped to dive it (after all, it took two grown men of tremendous skill to make the trip), that the much greater challenge is getting them out, and getting them home. But as the ordeal stretches into a third week, the heavy rains that could drown them entirely are well on their way, and if the water doesn’t, the lack of oxygen will. So with the help of a fellow diver (and medical doctor), they propose an ambitious, risky plan of sedation and extraction. It’s the best of several terrible options.
This is the best stuff in “The Rescue,” as the filmmakers go full bore on the drama and tension, and treat John and Rick’s assembly of several fellow cave divers to execute the plan like something out of a heist movie, the two masterminds rounding up the team of specialists. And they can only put the job in their hands; at one point, cave diving is referred to as “white waver caving,” and it is tense, terrifying work. An Air Force pararescuer who helps out muses, “Why would someone do this for fun?” and at the story’s hairiest moments, it’s a question worth asking.
And it’s one Vasarhelyi and Chin want to answer. Understanding the kind of person that’s driven to this kind of danger, whether via self-reflection or the observations of those who know them, was also the key to “Free Solo,” a film about a man who climbs towering rock walls with no backup measures, and understands there is no landscape as rocky as the mind. Similar attempts are made to probe the backgrounds and personalities of John, Rick, and their cohorts, but we don’t come away feeling that connected to them. Perhaps it’s simply a matter of focus; the single subject of the previous film created an intimacy that’s barely possible here.
The earlier film also benefitted from the proximity of the filmmakers to the events as they happened; here, it’s mostly recalled, with (per the end credits) “some scenes” being “reenacted by the actual participants.” The logistics of cameras accompanying the divers were presumably not possible, but the compromise is ultimately distancing (and distracting), particularly when the footage actually captured in the cave at the time – particularly their initial, stunning discovery of the team alive – is so powerful.
The film’s concluding passages are genuine in their emotion; how could they not be? Yet Vasarhelyi and Chin unnecessarily press on the gas too firmly in their feel-good ending, piling atop the real and raw power of those scenes with a closing sequence of corny animation and a cringe-worthy, right-on-the-nose closing song by Aloe Blacc. It’s too much, the equivalent of plopping down next to the viewer and shoving a box of tissues into their hands. But until then, there’s much in “The Rescue” to recommend, and if it doesn’t come together as expertly as its predecessor, well, few documentaries do. [B]
Follow along with our full coverage from the 2021 Telluride Film Festival here.
