Thirteen Lives ~ film review

 

1/26/2023   

 

Thirteen Lives

Film review

 

          Why does this film matter so much to me? Not my culture, not my turf, not my problem. In June, 2018, news of some young kids lost in a cave  - - or water? where? Somewhere Thailand? Weeks later all kids alive, good.

          Then last August 4, 2022, watching Late Night with Colbert, guest Ron Howard chats up new film, Thirteen Lives  - -  oh, that “Thai kids in the cave” thing, so? Kids ok, so why should I care now? Well, that interview pulled me in, Howard telling how this film was much different than any he’d made, and that’s a long list. Howard explained, “…every film I’ve ever done, there is always conflict with various elements of the production, but not this time. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, wanted to get this one right, because the truth of the real event was so powerful.”

          Amazon prime, click click, Thirteen Lives. Hey, there’s a senior discount for Prime, use it!

          Where? Tham Luang Cave, Knun Nam Nang Non Forest Park, Princess Luang Mountain, Chiang Rai Provence, Ban Chong, Thailand. Oh yes, apparently the language in northern Thailand is so different from what is spoken in southern Thailand, often the two languages are considered different languages. When Howard and staff considered making the film, they realized that if they shot the film in the “Bangkok” Thai language, that would be waaaaay wrong for the setting in northern Thailand for this film. Howard explained, “It would be like shooting a film set in New York and using all actors speaking in deep south American dialect.” Oh.

          Not my normal type of film, almost a guy thing, edges into military thing, but my concern for the young kids kept me watching. OMG. Then worse, OMG. Worse. OMG. If anything could go wrong, it did. Repeatedly. Life and death right here. Then what? OMG.

          I’ve watched the film easily 100 times, it never gets boring, never disappoints. I’ve also watched many interviews, news clips, documentaries, followed threads to learn more about those strange dive guys, sure hope some women are among those folks, yep, British Cave Rescue Council. BCRC. With my early viewing, I was so puzzled – why don’t the divers wear gloves? Duhh. Well, as I viewed many clips, Howard explains it in a Vanity Fair interview, Oh Oh Oh. Turns out, in that kind of diving, you often can’t see an inch beyond your face mask, so your fingertips are essential to give you information about how to proceed. OMG.

          Kinda funny, one doc clip I found of a BCRC guy chatting up his “hobby,” the interviewer asked if the BCRC folks are team players – the BCRC guy laughed loud and said “NO!”

          Yes, I watch actors in controlled underwater cave “sets” - - we aren’t really in the real cave. Hell no. But the real guys were, and how interesting to me that two of them were brought on the film set as consultants. Howard tells a truth: when the actors were filming,  actor Viggo Mortensen/Stanton told Howard the actors wanted to continue with the dive filming, “we have learned from the BCRC guys, now we need to do this to portray the events as best we can, no stunt divers, please.” However, every one of them had a serious underwater panic attack, and they were in a tank, not the cave. Whew. Howard told Colbert that his crew did not tell him of the panic attacks because he would have stopped the shoot right then and proceeded with trained divers. What the BCRC folks know, and the actors learned, is that when you are underwater and can’t see an inch beyond your face mask, you can get very dis-oriented and that leads to very bad outcomes. This point is made again and again in the film. Mistakes and panic and fatigue and confusion don’t help survival needs. Then, well, more negatives, the equipment failures underwater. Trust your gear? Know your limit from that tank of oxygen? Remember that limit when you’ve been challenged with a dive that takes 12 or more hours?

          Check this: as the end creds roll, for 10 minutes or more, which I love for the classy music, there’s a disclaimer posted among the other info: blah blah blah “This motion picture is based on true events, however, some of the characters, names and certain locations and events have been changed, and others have been fictionalized for dramatization purposes.”

          Is Thirteen Lives a Hollywood dumb-down of real events? Somehow, hearing Howard’s talk on Colbert, if hundreds of Thai staff and actors put their weight behind this film as it was close enough to the real deal, good enough for me.

One of my many mysteries is from a doc put online from U.S. Military, it goes on and on and on, but within, that whoever guy claims it was US military who had the idea of the drugs. Huh? Another puzzle - - apparently U.S. Military got permission from Thai whoever to start drilling a big hole in the mountain to get the kids out! REALLY!!! They show film footage of it in progress! Really! That idea went way wrong and it was shut down within a few days.

Meworries  -  -  did the US military cause some of the violent rock shifts as real divers were trying to get through the cave turned water tunnel? The film gives a few of these rocks busting through the film set “cave” so glad this was included for me to grasp the seriousness of the death-defying feats of strength the real divers had to face.  Did this lead to some of the deaths? Who died? Yes, two Thai Navy Seals died in or from their attempts to reach the boys, this was a harsh and very ugly event.

          I do appreciate a nod to this bad idea in the film, as actors representing Stanton and Volanthen are first discussing the event, Colin Farrell/Volanthen mentions someone is digging holes, Mortensen/Stanton is shocked and discouraged, “Holes?” Move on.

          The ‘holes’ was one of many bad ideas, how about this? We see in the film, lots of Thai folks trying with all effort to install flexible piping/tubing with full plan to get more oxygen to the stranded folks deep within the cave. My bad to not know those measurements, what does 2&1/2 K mean? Or is it 2&1/2k? Then elsewhere something about 2500 meters. Whatever. Deep trouble. Apparently, the tubing for oxygen was a waste of time. Desperate people do desperate things. Wiki is kind to translate the math numbers to my kind of brain.

          How interesting about the thousands of folks up on the mountain trying to divert the water! I love this element of the film, and yeah, I admit, if the local who has the best knowledge of the mountain lived next door, yeah, I’d do his dishes! Yeah, he’s an actor, ok.

          Which brings me to one of the solid aspects of the film I truly appreciate, we get glimpses of many things that went waaaaaaaay wrong. Methinks probably in the real event, that list was longer. Which, really, gives authority to the miracle it was.

          Spoiler alert:

          The kids were drugged and pushed through death moments for over five hours. OMG. I think for hours about this: can you imagine being totally responsible for another human’s life for over five hours while your own life is also at extreme danger? Stress! Anxiety! Fear! Keep in mind the divers have already been under ground and most often under water for hours (some of the cave journey required carrying diving gear over edges of rock then back in the water tunnel, etc.) before they reach the kids, then all the prep for each kid, then diver back under water with his “package” for more hours, so those divers were working 12-14 shifts, three days in a row.

          Which brings me to my new respect for the BCRC folks. They aren’t part of a military, nope. They buy their own gear, fix their own gear, carry their own gear, handle their own shit. They aren’t TOLD what to do, they just keep researching best equipment, best solutions to dangerous circumstances, and try to stay on top of their hobby of “sump diving.” Howard says it this way, “this film celebrates volunteerism, none of the BCRC guys had to be there, but they came and moved the needle in spite of risking their own lives, what an object lesson on what a group of people can accomplish.”

          Yes, sump diving. As we learn up close and personal, extremely different than “diving.” I learned so much about this, and only respect the folks who are on top of their “hobby” all the more. No, they had never, NEVER, done anything like what we see in the film. No one had. Ever. The BCRC folks did follow each other’s dives, kept up with each other, respected each other. One of the BCRC divers who did the real rescue said, “I’ve started to think that I was probably preparing for this Thai dive all my life.”

          I find the following fascinating – those kids in the film? Only one, the smallest, had any acting experience, the others were totally clueless about the process. Good news - - we see a Thai actor, as one of the parents, the guy with the knit hat, well, that guy in real life has an acting studio. With him on the film set, he was a major help with the young new actors. Know this: the real kids were pre-teen and early teen boys, the coach was in his early 20s. The coach had left his Buddhist monk life in Myanmar, but I found him and the real boys filmed at a Buddhist monastery after the event, they were invited to spend a few weeks there to re-group after the world attention to their nightmare.

          Those small pieces of the film – a glimpse at a stalactite dripping water and a plastic cone as the water rises at the opening of the cave. Trouble coming.

          What a jolt to learn what scene was shot first! YIKES! Let’s start really hard and see who lives! Even better, with that scene, Howard had added a Thai camera guy who came up with the idea of filming behind the kid’s legs, OH! Yes!

          Gotta share this – the actor/coach did a 10 day fast to match what the real coach dealt with, whew. But no, the actor kids did not go hungry, the magic of photoshop could skinny those kids up.

Vern Unsworth, a real guy, played by actor Lewis Fitz-Gerald, who really had skills to help in this emergency was another part of this miracle. How does a Brit live in that area, know the language, and be trusted by locals? Him. Yes. My bad to not make note of another international person there, who the BCRC folks gave immense creds to for helping with the arrangements and permissions needed from Thai government.

Danger, no shortage of that.

Thank God we get to see what the actor/coach did while in this terrible circumstance, just as the real coach did, he taught the boys to meditate and and calmed them for 10 long days before they had any contact with anyone. 10 days. 10 nights. The actor/coach, in prep for the role, spent some weeks at a Buddhist monastery to get familiar with how to teach young folks to meditate. Really. Whew. I can barely comprehend what it must have meant to the real coach in there. OMG. Get your head around that. You’re in the total darkness, except for some flashlights with batteries running low, no food, only questionable safe water to drink is what’s dripping from above, no easy place to sleep, poop, and yeah, within a few days, no more poop, so that. What the film doesn’t share, is that the real coach had a watch and that gave him and the kids the mark of time passing. Wait until you hear what the real coach did to find a way out. OMG!

Ok, here it is: they had enough stuff to tie together as a “rope”, tied one end to coach’s leg, the kids all held the other end, and he went in the water, then under water, to see if maybe just beyond where they were trapped, well, maybe it’s just a short dive and we could walk out! Well, no. Had he been trapped underwater, well, ugly. Had some of the kids been pulled in, well, ugly. Others have suggested, and I add my voice, when the real kids and coach get to tell their story, that will be a film I must see.

Another element of the film that always matters to me, is the powerful and beautiful scenes of Buddhist prayer ceremonies, yes, these are staged, but just imagine the depth of the real prayer services that helped all who were in great need of hope. I have no background with that religion, but have been quite taken with a USA film, Kundun  - you tube -  filmed in 1997 and then shut down by USA as Hollywood needed China market and China was not happy about Kundun in any way shape or form. Bury the release date, give it no promotion, and the film drifted to you tube over the years. Well, it’s a very interesting film that gives a clear look at some elements of Buddhism. Enough for me to bring my images from that film to Thirteen Lives and how Buddhism matters to Thai people. And Tibet people! Not China people! Who said “religion is poison.” Guess. No more Tibet, Kundun shows how a big country eats a little country.

A valuable real fact that helped in so many ways, and we get to watch actor/Thai authorities ask permission from local actor/Thai farmers to flood their fields to help the kids. I love that scene.

Ah, how I wish, and yet I should have known, as we watch the BCRC divers find the kids, then as they exit many hours later with the news the kids and coach are alive, well, then we see Mortensen/Stanton passionately telling the gov that there is no way those kids will come out alive - - that scene? How could we, viewers, have a moment to process the fact that Stanton and Volanthen had over 6 hours to think about getting the kids out while they dove back to the entrance. They had those long hours to face the fact that those young kids would not be able to make the journey. It’s such a dramatic moment of the film, and oh, surely much more dramatic when that really happened. We watch the good news spread among the thousands of people there, and yet none of them know the truth. Ouch.

I puzzle about some aspects of the film, like did the Thai Navy Seals who followed the next day after BCRC divers found the kids, did those Seals intend to stay with the kids? The film shows that they made a serious error in using most of their tank oxygen, but this might be part of the fiction aspect to keep the film within it’s time constraints. Reading with wiki account, it sounds like the Seals planned that, but the film narrative handles it with much different intent. What to believe, what to trust?

I was quite impressed to learn that during the real event, some, maybe Thai Seals, created a “map” of the cave route on the ground nearby by using any junk to outline and chart the course.  This was to help divers start to get familiar with the twists and turns of the route, to avoid a diver totally losing grip on reality. We see several instances in the film where divers and others totally panic and lose their ability to navigate the evil water hell. Oh, the one instance of an actor/BCRC diver, with a drugged boy, losing his way and not having a clue as to where he and the kid were, OMG. I think that really happened.

I ponder one scene, the actress/Chai’s mom, excellent acting by the way, confronting the gov and his assistant about the trapped kids, her kid, her fears and anger. Well, could this be a Hollywood deal? We know she’s “stateless” right then, and my suspicious mind immediately wonders – even in that nightmare, would a stateless person get in the face of a government official? She could have been taken and deported, methinks. I did look into this a bit, apparently that part of Thailand is – different. Lots of folks moving through borders there, but there’s some weird thing that if you leave that area of Thailand you must have documentation to travel to other areas in Thailand. The kids soccer/football team, “Wild Boars” couldn’t play some other teams elsewhere in Thailand because some of them didn’t have needed documents. I’ve also come to understand that area of Thailand has been known as the “Golden Triangle” for a long time, the good heroin comes from there. They grow THAT kind of poppy flower. Some big money there, eh? Thailand, Burma/Myanmar, Laos.

Speaking of the gov’s assistant, guess what? That role was added for the film narrative, and how I appreciate that actress’s role there. Watching her eyes, her smarts in a glance, her affinity with her boss, her kind and gentle power, she adds much. Should have had a real woman really in that position. A+ to the script writers for adding that role and casting for that actress.

I have respect for how Howard handled the death of a Thai volunteer, Saman Kunan. He had been a Thai Navy Seal previous, heard about the event, showed up to help, and paid with his life. That could have been a small element of the film, but how I appreciate the fact that the film honors this man and another Seal who also died from that event. Wiki tells much about this, how the Thai King gave Kunan the best funeral, raised his rank with the Seals several above his last, and now there’s a statue of him near the cave. Howard could have clipped the facts to a short moment but took precious minutes to give us conjecture of how the guy died. In real life, apparently his dive partner tried to do CPR on him within the cave somewhere. OMG. Howard gives us excellent, brutal, graceful filming of a man dying. One puzzle – we see that diver, actor/Kunan, start out with a blue tarp wrapped with stuff to take to the kids, then along the way, that tarp turns green. I watched that part of the film several times, did I miss someone else taking the blue tarp?  Is this green tarp with a different diver? No. Just the film messing with me, what to trust? Who’s doing what? And hey, don’t think you can keep all the divers sorted out, they’re behind face masks, its challenging to keep the who/what stuff sorted out.

Yet there’s so much to value in this film, like the small piece as Farrell/Volanthen calls his son in England, I just love that audio and visual. A man loving his son, a son loving his dad. I needed that.

I get a bit of info with the film about how the divers prepped for giving the kids the drugs. In real life, local kids volunteered as the local high school gave their swimming pool for the divers to do a FAST study of the what, who, when, where, and how. One of the real divers was a doctor, another was a veterinarian, others probably never held a needle to stab anything. And speaking of fast, for the divers to get permissions for this way dangerous idea, well, the Thai King gave legal permission that if anything went wrong, the doctor and diver would not be held responsible. This all had to happen with 24 hours, rain was coming and coming and coming.

Need more drama? Good, because its time. Music! Time to get out the big drugs, get to the kids, prep them for the trip, drug them for the trip, dress them for the trip, and pray for both as they go under water for hours. OMG. That scene, where one of the BCRC divers realizes his kid is starting to wake up, his anxiety to get the needles out, drops them, OMG, panics to find the dropped drugs, finds them, gets one dose in the kid just in time. OMG. I stopped breathing.

Then, here’s another puzzle that I still ponder. We see in the film, and probably that really happened, the Thai authorities did not want any names or health info of those coming out as “packages” released to the public, not even to the families. Of course they were MOST eager to know which child came out, how is he, I want to see my child, all that. But no, the Thai’s used big while beach umbrellas to shield eyes and cameras from all the kids coming out of the cave and taken directly to waiting ambulance to waiting helicopter to waiting hospital. What a miracle that any of the kids made it out alive, all the days with no food, the lack of enough oxygen where they were trapped, all the serious conditions that could also have meant death to any of them, then put LOTS of big drugs in their struggling fragile bodies, well, again, OMG. Miracles.

We’re not done. More drama, really. As the kids were being brought out, with hundreds of Thai and other international personnel in the cave entrance, the pumps used to pump water out start exploding. BANG! BANG! Everyone starts running toward the exit, this is gonna be a very bad place to be, get out now. But one problem – not all divers are out. Big problem. Yet, when last diver emerges from the water, the other divers, still waiting for the last one, cheer him on with loud “YEE HAW!” I’m yelling along with the film, YEEEEE HAWWWWWW!

We also get a moment with the BCRC divers as they re-group in a small room after the last dive is over. Such a touching moment as one diver, who almost didn’t make it with his “package” kid, as he starts to apologize to his buddies, the love shown in that moment lingers with me.

Then we learn that Dr. Harris just got word his dad died, we see him trying to grasp this. I try to grasp what this might mean to men I know, men I love, who never had a dad to love. I’m from broken people.

I still wonder who put crowd numbers to the real event, according to the film folks, 5,000 people from 17 countries came and helped. According to wiki, 10,000 people helped. Hmm.

          I must be out of step with my culture, as this film didn’t make 2022 top ten film list. Not even mentioned for any award. How to miss this miracle of everything going wrong and yet all live? Maybe this – as I encouraged friends to check this film out, wifey told me later, “we tried, but we just couldn't keep watching, it was too much.” WTF???? Like I would suggest a lame worthless violent film? Huh? Hard to watch, beautiful to see.