Feature by Brad Balfour
Back in 2018, the story broke internationally that a junior football team named the Wild Boars and their 25 year-old assistant coach were trapped deep in the Tham Luang Nang Non cave in Chiang Rai, in the northern part of Thailand. For 18 days, they were there while a rescue mission was assembled that included around 5,000 people from 17 countries. Volunteers from around the world — cave diving experts who usually explored underwater for fun — rushed to the Southeast Asian country, first to find the endangered team and then to develop a way to bring them out.
Early attempts by Thailand’s SEAL divers failed while the weather was rainy. After a noted Buddhist monk blessed the site, the rain abated. Joining the rescue effort was veteran diver Rick Stanton (Viggo Mortensen), from central England, and friend and fellow British diver John Volanthen (Colin Farrell). Others joined them later, forging a crew that could accomplish the rescue.
Though the coach should have known better, they had entered a cave with a series of chambers that led deeper and deeper into the interior. Though it was well known, no one would normally enter there during the rainy season — it was still yet to come as they began.
The boys and coach might not have ventured so deep into the cave if they could have known that the seasonal monsoon was to start up days earlier than expected. The waters flooding into the cave forced them to seek higher ground. Once that occurred, they were trapped.
The world was mesmerized while a miracle was sought. Televised internationally, the crisis united the globe and gave hope to all that with such cooperation, success could occur. Fortunately, all the boys and the coach were saved. Sadly, the event wasn’t pulled off without some tragedy — one Thai SEAL diver drowned and another died from an infection during his time in the cave.
Last year a great doc from National Geographic Films, “The Rescue” – detailed the effort through official footage, body cam recordings and news footage. It showed the massive effort and spotlighted Staton and the other divers who saved them.
But the retelling didn’t end there.
Apparently, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquired the rights, signing Oscar-winning director Ron Howard (“Cocoon,” “Apollo 13”) in April 2020 to make the film, with William Nicholson writing the screenplay. In March 2021, veteran actors Viggo Mortensen, Colin Farrell and Joel Edgerton were cast to star with Tom Bateman coming on board later. Filming began on March 29, 2021 in Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia and later was also shot in Thailand.
Howard tasked his lead actors with not only playing the rescuers but, on their own urging, to do much of the stunt work while filming complicated underwater scenes in a specially designed set employing water tanks to look like the cave’s various chambers. And despite the artificial caves constructed with real safeguards not found in the actual site, there were still many risks for all the actors, especially the inexperienced Thai cast.
“Thirteen Lives” received positive reviews from critics. On the Rotten Tomatoes website, the production has an approval rating of 86%. As it noted, “Steadily helmed by director Ron Howard, ‘Thirteen Lives’ offers an incomplete but still gripping dramatization of an incredible true story.”
Culled from several press conferences, this Q&A offers the point of view of the veteran filmmakers/actors who had to adapt to unusual and difficult conditions to make a film that didn’t get bogged down on too many complex details. Most importantly, it needed to show the human drama behind the daring rescue.
“Thirteen Lives” was released in select cinemas on July 29, 2022, by United Artists Releasing, and has been streaming on Prime Video since August 5th, 2022.
Q: Ron, with so many players and stories, what were the essential elements you sought to capture in this telling of this story?
Ron Howard: It was almost entirely built around the key turning points, the critical challenges and the way that they were met. There’s a scene in “Apollo 13” that people reference and it shows up on clips to this day. It’s where they throw all of this junk on the table and say, “This is what they have for us to fix their oxygen system. This is all they have onboard to work with. We’re going to have to figure it out.” And they do. It’s based on a real event.
When I read this script, there were many surprises in terms of the wide variety of heroic, selfless acts that were demonstrated that I didn’t know about, in addition to the heroism and remarkable feats that the divers achieved. There was this sort of seat-of-your-pants problem-solving going on while under duress and pressure. I was fascinated by that. I tried to lay out what the technical problems, the emotional challenges and the physical threats. We just kept building scenes around that.
With a scripted, dramatized version of an event like this, you have to have great actors and scenes you can construct to make these points. There’s that larger theme that you are talking about. But it’s also about the price that people pay, the investment that they make. That you don’t see in a headline. If you’re an audience member, it makes the film very relatable, creates empathy and suspense. It just reminds us what the real heroes did for us. I creates an object lesson in what is possible.
Of course, they are people — people making decisions. And, in this case, a lot of courageous people and volunteers. It’s one thing to see highly trained individuals doing the thing they’re paid to do. Rick Stanton was a firefighter. A story about him on the job going and doing a rescue is one thing. It’s another thing when Stanton is an expert cave diver. This is his hobby and he agrees to take this period of time in his life, put himself at risk physically, emotionally, and everything else as an act of volunteerism.
It wasn’t just the divers’ volunteering. There were thousands, including water engineer Thanet Natisri, whose remarkable efforts [to pump out thousands of tons of water from the cave] were made there. I was just fascinated by the tapestry of volunteerism, intercultural interaction, and the courage.
Q: Speaking about the intercultural nature of it, there wasn’t much English spoken for more than maybe 15, 20 minutes.
RH: Probably eight minutes.
Q: Why did you make that decision — to minimize the English?
RH: Audiences are more and more sophisticated all the time thanks in a large part to [the evolution of] streaming. I’ve seen it my entire career. Audiences are becoming more discerning, they’re smarter. This is an expectation now. I don’t think people want things to be homogenized and simplified. In fact with a story like this, they want what’s granular and for it to feel authentic and true.
I never blinked about that. Fortunately, the studio executives were very, very supportive. It was a screenwriter writing a script in English. It’s a director who doesn’t speak Thai. That’s where somebody like Raymond [Phathanavirangoon], who was one of our producers, and also a writer, could come in and work with this translation and help me deputize the cast. Also so I don’t make too many mistakes. We’re professionals and doing the job, but part of the job is to make this play as if it was a Thai movie.
The scenes and details are vitally important to me in that way. Everyone rose to the occasion and brought a lot of detail, not just changing the dialogue, but ideas for moments within the scenes and with the attitudes that just enriched them. All of us foreigners working on the film really appreciated it.
Q: How much time did you spend in that cave every day? Were you there for hours and hours?
RH: It was all the rehearsal time and 10 straight days of shooting right at the beginning of the film. There was a tremendous amount of pressure on the boys, on James and on everyone to get those early scenes right.
Q: Can the actors who portrayed the divers, talk about their actual performances. Was it terrifying to do takes again and again as it was to watch?
Viggo Mortensen: We prepared. Fortunately Ron and his team gave us lots of time to prepare. I had also been speaking for months with Rick, it was during the pandemic, so it was mostly by Zoom although I did get to meet him in England at one point. I don’t know if we were following the rules exactly, I shouldn’t say that, but as far as meeting up, we found a way to meet up. It worked. we were safe. But he did turn me on to Tim and said, “I can’t bring you to England to a cave dive, but we could meet briefly because you have to go do some work in London and I’ll meet you.”
He turned me on to some people that he had trained with Jason and John in northern Spain in the mountains there. He said, “The rock is the same as in these caves in Thailand and the situation, the conditions are the same, the water’s a bit colder, it’s winter. But you could try that.”
So I learned that a little bit and thought wow, this is harrowing. Why would someone do this for fun? It’s crazy. But as an actor, you want to get it right. I was not only listening [clears throat] to Rick the way he spoke and trying to learn as much as I could, via Zoom he’d show me pictures, videos, so forth.
Then we went there, got prepared and all of us actors who are playing these divers, we just watched them very carefully. You want to get it right, but you also want to survive the shoot [laughs]. It’s like we were very, very attentive to everything they [did].
Q: This wasn’t like a lot of special effects of bubbles and things. It was real. You all were really doing…
VM: Ron is a remarkable storyteller and the way he did this movie, it’s like a giant independent film. You talked about the subtitling, that there’s actually Thai actors are speaking Thai.
If this was a movie that was made 20 or 30 years ago or by another kind of director, all the Thai characters would be speaking English and it would be mainly about the westerners and some heroic thing. This was not that. It wasn’t a special effects movie. We were underwater, we were really doing these things. Once they realized we could do it, Rick said to Ron, “No, I think these guys have learned enough that they can really do this. We’ll supervise all the time and be careful, but they can they safely do it,” which allowed Ron to see us up close under there. It’s not like they took our heads and put them on stunt men.
RH: I have to jump in here to give you a sense of Viggo’s focus, Colin as well, and everyone, it wasn’t quite like where I said, “Oh, I guess you guys could do all the diving.” There was like practically an intervention. Viggo came in and said, “This is so much a part of our character and now that we understand it and talk with Rick, but I think he’ll see that we can do it safely,” which Rick confirmed and so did our stunt coordinator, “Please schedule it so we do all the diving.” Well, that’s a totally preposterous idea for a production as complicated as this one. And we had money, but not that much money.
I said, “Viggo, come on, I appreciate what you’re saying, but I don’t know if I can do that.” And they literally said, “Whatever it takes for us, we will forego overtime, we will forget about our turnaround,” sorry, SAG, Screen Actors Guild. We’ll go in on Saturdays.”
And they did it. They worked so hard because at that point they said, this is a part of our character and cave diving is so specific and we’ve learned and we’ve gotta do it.
That allowed me, the director, to create these kind of long lingering shots that would resolve on their faces. You would recognize that in these tight spots, twisting, turning, moving their tanks, reaching up, pulling themselves along the rocks, that’s them. And they did it. They did every bit of it. Everybody did.
Q: Would you like to speak to the slipping and sliding?
Joe Edgerton: It really was exciting and we were in a controlled environment. But at the same time with all the fast-tracked training and understanding the madness of underwater cave diving, of diving in zero visibility with all this extra equipment. Of course, in this case of the rescue, getting towards a point where we could carry stunt people and the kids unconscious, pretending to be unconscious, through these really difficult obstacles, we were in a safe environment. We were very well looked after and very well trained and guided.
But there were moments that really underlined for us how dangerous cave diving, how dangerous it can be if you aren’t in the safe environment that we’re in. But it was fun because I can’t imagine where there’s another job that you get to go and live out what’s like a childhood fantasy which is like pretending to be a real-life hero, which I’m not [laughs] and learning a new skill and understanding something that you may not have investigated before.
Most movies give you that opportunity to learn something new about a culture and its history, about a skill that you may not have had at that time in your life. Somebody gives you that opportunity, opens the door to that and you take it. It’s fun and you make sure along the way [laughs] that you look after yourself.
Q: How did you actors train for these underwater sequences? What do you hope the audience will take away from it? Tom, can you start?
Tom Bateman: As Viggo said earlier, we had the most amazing team around us to help us look as good and authentic as possible. One of the things I found with this film was the lack of, for want of a better expression, “acting.” There wasn’t like [it was] a performance. There never was. I think when we were learning how to train, we just wanted to be as good as possible. That went down to the relationship that these guys have with their kit. Every morning, we would put our kit on, which would take a long time and you have to go through it religiously and that was the same underwater. You go through things step-by-step clinically.
What was amazing in that thorough training was that it became part of your character without you having to present a character. You just did those things underwater. And we had two, three weeks. But then I considered it a training the whole way through. Not until we wrapped, did I feel like, “Okay, that job is done.” Even on the last stunt day we were doing, I was still learning things. “Oh, this is a new pinch, this is a new direction we have to go in, I have to do something new to get my canister through here.” But we were in wonderful hands.
Q: So if I get trapped in a cave, one of you would be able to come rescue me?
TB: We could [laughs].
VM: Between all of us together, we could.
Q: All right, everybody, you got your marching orders here.
RH: And I think they’d probably have Rick’s phone number on speed-dial.
VM: Yeah, we do.
Q: He’s the one I would really want.
TB: You’ll never believe who rescued me from that case.
JE: Viggo Mortensen turned up.
VM: As far as the actors go, one thing that’s great about this movie is that everybody in it — just like in the real story that we’re referencing — is a supporting actor. There are no lead actors in this movie or in this story. And that was a beautiful thing.
Like Raymond, Ron and others were talking about, it’s great nowadays. With many of the so-called leaders in this country and in countries around the world, they exhibit a kind of selfish, greedy, dishonest behavior as something to have as an example. It’s wonderful that you have a recent event that exemplifies selfless collaboration [clears throat] for the common good.
Neither Rick nor any of the others, none of the Thai people, were doing this because they were going to get rich, or gain new territory, or political power. People did it because it was the right thing to do. As Raymond has said, it does show that humans are capable of doing amazing things together. We sometimes forget that and even get fascinated by people who behave really badly and selfishly. It’s like “Wow, that’s cool, look at how they got that done, they’ve got power and maybe I should vote for that person.”
It’s like, “No, maybe not.” Maybe these people — most of whom are pretty much if not all are — none of them were known or famous people. They got together and did something amazing for all the right reasons. And we can do that more than once.
Q: There’s so much water in this film, which, of course, is challenging for a filmmaker, or an actor, but maybe not for the divers. You’ve seen this on the big screen now. With the sound of those canisters and the bubbles, it was so intense. How accurate did that feel?
Rick Stanton: When we were brought in, Jason and myself, as technical advisors, we said early on was that you get these sudden noises, moving cylinders, and the big clang that makes everyone jump. That really happened on set and these have been brought out in sound engineering. That’s what it sounded like. When you’re underwater in caves like that, you can’t see very much. One of your primary senses is hearing and that’s heightened. You get bubbles drifting along the ceiling and making noises, the breath, everything’s accentuated because your eyesight is limited. That’s entirely real.
Q: Were you on set as they filmed these scenes as well?
RS: Yeah, the whole time, the whole period in Australia, as a technical advisor.
Q: What was it like to see the actual recreations of what you experienced being filmed?
RS: I’ve never worked on a film before, so the whole process of being involved in movie-making was incredible. It’s a story we were intimately involved with. I’m really proud of what we did in Thailand and I see it as a celebration. I’m proud to have helped other people see it by making this film as authentic as it could possibly be.
Q: Who knew that these were the teams of divers and the ones sent out on rescue missions?
RS: Clearly, there’s a backstory for this because if you think about it, it’s preposterous that myself, a 57-year-old man who lives in England, was flown into Thailand to take part in this rescue. If you think about that, that’s ludicrous. And watching the actors who were age-appropriate wandering around with all this equipment in the cave, it brought home to me how preposterous we must have looked out there.
But, there’s a huge back story to what John, Jason and myself have done, not just in rescues. We do this for a hobby. But we got a name for doing our hobby and, because of that, we were the people to call on various incidents and resolve them. All over the world we’ve been flown across Europe, we’ve been flown across the Atlantic to do things. We have a huge history [in that] and are largely successful with these sorts of rescues. That’s why we were called in.
But it is entirely voluntary, we don’t have to do it, it’s not our job. But why wouldn’t you? Because we have amassed those skills. So when I heard about the rescue in Thailand, it was entirely appropriate that we would go. We were amongst the best placed people on the planet to go there and make a difference.