Just like Ron Howard’s other disaster film “Apollo 13”, the unlucky number can be found right in the title: “Thirteen Lives”. It was only a matter of time before the 2018 Thai cave disaster landed in the hands of the Hollywood director. “I’ve never had a challenge as big as this,” said the 68-year-old to the APA about his drama in an interview on Zoom.
It’s the stuff Hollywood blockbusters are made of: the titular 13 Lives belong to the schoolboys and their soccer coach who were trapped in a cave in northern Thailand in June 2018, prompting a colossal rescue operation that involved thousands of volunteers appeared all over the world. The obstacles were so numerous that the chances of success were slim to say the least. The rescue would take 17 days and all the boys miraculously survived in the end.
A survival story with a happy ending. Ron Howard’s resume spans more than just a few such films (“Backdraft,” “Apollo 13,” “Solo: A Star Wars Story”), but in “Thirteen Lives,” out August 5 on Amazon Prime, the director avoids the usual Hollywood sensationalism. Its stars, Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell, who play two divers, also left their egos at home and “were in the service of a bigger story,” he says. “It’s a good example of how extraordinary things can be achieved together, putting politics aside to solve problems together,” says Howard. “It’s an aspect of the story that’s valuable in the world right now.” He and screenwriter William Nicholson (“Gladiator”) probably decided that this incredible story needed no lurid flourishes.
It was a huge challenge cinematically because Ron Howard wanted it to look authentic. As authentic as the weightlessness scenes in “Apollo 13” (1995), where he actually went into weightlessness with the actors. “It was a very unique challenge filming multiple dives and navigating seven different dive sequences from start to finish, building the cages, and training the divers. We decided that the actors should do all the diving themselves and we gave in also gave them cameras so they could film each other.”
Once you’ve seen the drama, you can understand how difficult it must have been to capture the dark underwater scenes. Joel Edgerton (“Loving”) plays Australian anesthesiologist and cave diver Richard Harris, who has the terrifying task of injecting emaciated youths with sedatives before dragging them underwater through the tunnels, unconscious. The actor learned in just a few weeks how to dive into claustrophobic caves while carrying a human – something that actually takes years of practice. “I felt very comfortable for the most part,” says Edgerton, “but there were definitely moments where I was reminded of how difficult it is to do what these guys are doing.”
Viggo Mortensen (“The Lord of the Rings”) plays English diver Richard Stanton, while the real Stanton was always on set in Australia as a consultant. The 63-year-old Mortensen even insisted, says Ron Howard, which cannot be taken for granted. “Sometimes actors feel self-conscious about having the people they play in close proximity, but in this case, Viggo made it clear from the start that that’s what he wanted. On ‘Apollo 13,’ we had a commander who our advisor was on set, but it wasn’t James Lovell because Tom Hanks was a little too intimidated to have James Lovell there.”
Although Americans tend to prefer their films without subtitles, Ron Howard wanted to shoot a large part of this story in Thai. “It was crucial that the culture was represented in a very authentic way,” he says. “I knew I wanted as much Thai as possible in the film. The film is at least 30 percent non-English and when we tested it nobody complained – on the contrary.”
In other hands, Thirteen Lives could have slipped into a White Savior narrative, but the film emphasizes that the rescue was a team effort between the Thai community and international rescuers. In front of and behind the camera, handled by none other than Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, the house and court cameraman to the great Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul (“Memoria”).
“Most of us live our lives very selfishly,” says Joel Edgerton (48) of the APA. “By nature we all try to get through life and life is hard but we have a humanity that wants to reach out, that wants to share, that wants to be kind and help. That there was a positive outcome is a good reminder that great things can happen when we all stick together.”
(The talks were led by Marietta Steinhart/APA)
(S E R V I C E – www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Lives-Colin-Farrell/dp/B09ZSKD17J)
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