Hope in humanity’s goodness

IN toxic times like the present, don’t you wish to see something positive, healing, selfless and truly heroic?

Then check out Netflix’s new series, Thai Cave Rescue on the true story of 13 people trapped in a flooded cave complex for 18 days in June-July of 2018.

Better yet, watch a film on the same topic that came out in August on Amazon Prime called Thirteen Lives by Academy Award-winning director Ron Howard.

This nail-biting rescue mission was massively covered by international media in minute detail and subsequently inspired several documentaries and feature films.

Still, these two latest offerings are welcome additions because four years on, they remind us there is hope in humanity. In a crisis that offered no gain or profit, individuals, organisations and governments selflessly came together for a common goal – to save the lives of 13 young lives in rural Thailand.

On Saturday, June 23, 2018, after a practice session, 12 boys aged between 11 and 16, who were members of the Wild Boars football team, and their 25-year-old assistant coach, Ekkaphon “Eak” Chanthawong, set off to explore the nearby Tham Luang cave complex cave in Chiang Rai Province in northern Thailand.

They had intended to spend just an hour in the cave, but the monsoon season had started early and heavy rainfall flooded the interior, trapping them. To escape the rising water, the boys scrambled further in until they reached a high shelf 2.5km from the cave entrance.

Thus began one of the greatest rescue stories of all time. But how does one manage to make, as Vanity Fair writer David Canfield puts it, “a convincing, pulse-pounding, incredibly detailed recreation of a remarkable global event” that had a happy ending?

Amazingly, Thirteen Lives and Thai Cave Rescue manage to do just that; both have their own strengths and actually complement each other.

Inevitably, the 147-minute film and six-part series take artistic licence to fictionalise “certain characters, names, locations, incidents and even dialogue for dramatic purposes”, but these changes overall do not take away any of the authenticity of the real events.

Thirteen Lives pares down to the essentials and is told largely from the point of view of British Cave Rescue Council divers Richard Stanton and John Volanthen, who gave the world that euphoric moment when they found the boys alive on the 10th day.

What the movie does extremely well is in replicating the harrowing, claustrophobic conditions in the flooded caves with water surges, rock falls and powerful currents.

A good part of the film covers the arduous and dangerous hours-long swim by the divers through the nine cave chambers to bring out the boys and coach one by one as unconscious, tied-up “packages”.

Viggo Mortensen (of Lord of the Rings fame) is well cast as the gruff Stanton and Irish actor Colin Farrell as the more affable Volanthen.

But Howard is forced to relegate the trapped 13 to side characters because Netflix had secured the rights to tell their story.

That is why Rotten Tomatoes views Thirteen Lives as a gripping dramatisation of an incredible true story but is still “incomplete”.

Thai Cave Rescue has no international big name stars, but its cast gives stellar performances. It plays down the roles of Stanton and Volanthen to give screen time to many more people, who played significant roles in the incident.

Chiang Rai governor and rescue operations chief Narongsak Osotanakorn emerges as a most interesting and sympathetic anchor character. He was just a week away from being transferred to another province when the incident happened.

Higher-ups in Bangkok order him to stay to handle the situation that grows ever more daunting and complex by the day. The unspoken underlying message is that he would be the fall guy if the incident ends in tragedy. But Narongsak rises to the occasion, showing steely leadership, courage and compassion.

Thai Cave Rescue also pays tribute to retired Navy SEAL diver Saman Gunan, the only person to perish in the flooded caves, by depicting his warm personality and the love between him and his wife, Meow.

His death hits everyone hard with the realisation that both the trapped ones and their rescuers could perish in the caves as well.

The Netflix series also shows what Thirteen Lives could not: how the 13 manage to survive so long in damp darkness with no food. It is thanks to Coach Eak who, as a former monk, was able to teach his charges to meditate to keep calm and conserve their energy and drink clean water dripping off stalactites.

The series also provides a back story on the uncertain lives of Eak and three of the boys, who were stateless people from tribes across the Myanmar-Thai border.

Both film and series capture the chaotic scene at the site with thousands of volunteers gathered to provide all sorts of services and support in terribly wet conditions.

Ditto the sacrifice of the local farmers who allowed the massive volume of water pumped out of the caves to drown their rice fields, destroying their crops.

Governments around the world pull out all stops to send in experts and equipment. This was especially so in the search for a child-size positive pressure full face mask for the smallest boy in the cave. Then there was the mounting tension and urgency to devise an ingenious plan to get the boys out before heavy rain returns to completely seal the caves for at least four months.

This is where cave diver and anaesthetist Dr Richard Harris comes in.

He was possibly the only person on the planet who could lead the unprecedented method of rescue. This was to drug the boys unconscious, which was ethically questionable because of the high risk of death by drowning.

While both film and series also touch on the villagers’ superstitious fear involving a legendary vengeful sleeping princess, they also show the Thais’ strong Buddhist faith that united and gave hope to people from all walks of life all over the country, which is deeply touching.

In the early days of the incident, it was assumed the SEALs would be the saviours. But as it turned out, these divers, while highly trained for open sea operations, were completely out of their depth (sorry, couldn’t resist it!) in tight, dark submerged caves.

It was people like Stanton, a retired fireman, Volanthen, an IT consultant, Dr Harris, an anaesthetist, and the many others of different nationalities and backgrounds whose hobby of cave diving combined with the experience of voluntary rescue work made them the only ones who knew what to do, and won over Thai government and military officials who initially doubted these seemingly amateurs.

I got very emotional watching the movie and even more so the series. I cried with the desperate parents, empathised with Gov Narongsak’s heavy responsibility and grieved over Saman’s death. I was moved by the bravery and camaraderie of the young boys and Coach Eak’s love for his charges. I choked up over the divers’ terrible fear of failure, sympathised with Dr Harris’ moral dilemma and finally welled up in relief and elation at the ultimate success of the mission.

But I teared up for one last emotionally charged moment in the miniseries: the postscript that states, “For Beam”, who is Papangkorn Lerkchaleampote who played Coach Eak. The actor died in his sleep on March 23, aged 25.

Netflix is not done with this story. It releases a documentary, The Trapped 13: How We Survived the Thai Cave, featuring actual members of the Wild Boars team today. Looks like I will still need my tissue box. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.