Deeper Review – Cave Diving Documentary Offers Drama but Lacks a Little Pleasure | Documentaries

TThis latest film from the interesting documentary director Jennifer Peedom – whose credits include the interesting productions “Sherpa” and “Mountain and River” – joins a series of films about highly adventurous people who engage in dangerous recreational activities. I’ve seen several of these films, including Man on Wire, about Philippe Petit’s daring walk between the Twin Towers, and Free Solo, about climber Alex Honnold having to live, quite literally, on the edge.

However, I can’t remember a scene in any of them that really explains why these highly intelligent people risk so much, beyond the usual talk about “feeling alive” or whatever existential passion this sort of thing is meant to scratch. I never felt like I really understood any of them or the appeal of what they do.

I also didn’t feel like I understood this after watching Deeper, an entertaining and well-made film that focuses on a team of cave divers as they explore New Zealand’s Pearse Resurgence cave system, known in the diving world for its “potential to be the deepest dived cave in the world.”

Among these divers is Richard Harris, one of Thailand’s cave rescue heroes, who is best known for his crucial role in sedating the trapped boys so they could be carried safely through flooded tunnels. Perhaps no series of words or images can fully express a person’s condition Reason for existence It can arise from the alignment of risk and purpose.

In Deeper, Harris (played by Joel Edgerton in Ron Howard’s Thirteen Lives) describes himself as “certainly not a brave man,” adding humility to his already large and disturbing list of virtues. Like all deep divers and their supporters, Harris and his team of “wet mules” – Dr Craig Challen, Ken Smith, Dr Simon Mitchell, Luke Nelson, Dave Hurst, Dave Apperley, John Dalla Zuana and Martyn Griffiths – want to go deeper into the Earth than anyone before them. This is a bit more complicated than putting on a wetsuit and emailing Guinness World Records. We learn, for example, about high-pressure neurological syndrome, which causes tremors, cognitive impairment and other disturbances that worsen with depth, sometimes to the point where divers can hardly use their hands.

The group believes they have found an alternative solution by using hydrogen as a breathing gas, leading to the 2023 “Hydrogen Expedition”, in which they decide to deploy themselves as guinea pigs. This daring journey gives the film its dramatic character, even though we know the main players are alive; They are there in the interviews. This is partly why phrases like “This is the moment of truth” and other musings on nerves and risk don’t get much traction. It’s in the narrator’s interest to show that things are going wrong, creating friction and suspense, but Peedum is a classy documentary director—not the kind who creates stakes for the sake of narrative convenience.

Spatially, Dipper follows the opposite path of Mount Everest’s cracked Bedum Dokku Sherpa – its two verticals point downward, toward the Earth’s crust rather than the clouds. One of the main challenges is that deep diving, which involves navigating pitch-black cavernous spaces, doesn’t quite look “visually interesting” in the way that summiting Mount Everest does. There are beautiful drone shots of New Zealand’s lush wilderness, but inevitably much of this film isn’t visually exciting once you start diving.

Ultimately, as important as the team’s trip is, it will likely mean a lot more to the deep diving community. More could have been done to communicate its importance to the rest of us. However, the film remains interesting throughout and creates a sense of adventure – especially for those, like me, whose idea of ​​risk is reheating leftovers twice.

Deeper is in Australian cinemas from October 30