Two weeks ago, I spent most of the week watching documentaries. A blend between music documentaries and adventure ones. Personally, adventure ones are much more my speed and if done well are some of my favorite films to watch. The past couple of months, HBO has been releasing a series of music documentaries about a diverse group of artists and Woodstock 99. Also, National Geographic on Disney+ has also been releasing some documentaries. There was one about Cousteau and one about rescuing the soccer team trapped in a cave in Thailand. Finally, there was my favorite, the release of 14 Peaks on Netflix.
Documentaries now are incredible in their ability to record events that are taking place. The continual innovation of cameras, not only video cameras, but also camera technology on cell phones. Now everyone has the capability to record something that might one day be considered historical or become relevant for the creation of a film. When people are making documentaries about more contemporary events or people, now there are often multiple videos spliced in that were taken on cell phones. Also, the clarity and quality of the new video cameras are stunning. Videos now, especially at their highest quality can really make a person feel like they are in the environment with the subject. When it comes to more adventurous documentaries, the ability to film at night is a huge bonus, before videos would come out grainy, but now there is a much higher clarity. There is also the further development of drones, which now take some of the most stunning shots that a person with a camera could never replicate without this technology.
The Rescue, now streaming on Disney+, has garnered a ton of attention for its chance to win best documentary at this year's Oscars. It was directed by previous Oscar winners: Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi. They broke into the spotlight a few years ago when their documentary Free Solo came out, an incredible story about Alex Honnold climbing El Capitan without a rope. It is one of my favorite things I have ever watched. This documentary is also an inspiring story, but this one is more heroic.
In Thailand, a soccer team filled with 12- and 13-year-olds go into a cave after their match, but when a monsoon hits, they have no way out, and this is no normal cave. At its fullest extent, it runs for miles underneath the surface, and it is one of the largest caves in Thailand. The military was called in by the government, but they were not experienced in cave diving, few people are. Miraculously enough, one of the guys who mapped out most of the cave system knew some guys in England who are at the top of the field of cave diving. So, the experts come in, but the conditions are initially so bad that even they cannot cover much ground. Luckily the monsoon gives them a break, and they get to venture further and further into the cave, this is over the course of days, and eventually they come across the team and their coach. The insane thing is that this was the easy part.
Now they must find a way to get 13 people out of a cave in which they are trapped over a mile in from the mouth. A journey that takes hours to venture through while diving. Their solutions are insane, but this is no ordinary problem, eventually they decide on sedating the kids and coach and then dragging them along through the cave with them connected to an oxygen tank. This did not go without hiccups. Although there were a few main heroes in the form of the divers, the whole operation would have collapsed without the help of hundreds of other people doing things like diverting water ways and using tubes to suck water out of the cave. It is truly a story about the amazing things that humans are capable of, and this includes the soccer team being able to survive in a cave for days upon days initially without food, and then with very minimal food and depleting oxygen.
Jimmy Chin also had his hands on another documentary that just recently released on Netflix, 14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible. This is also a story about an incredible accomplishment and the aversity the human body can go through. A Nepali climber, Nimsdai Purja, Nims for short, came up with a plan to climb all 14 peaks that are over 8,000 meters in under seven months which would be a new record by a massive margin. None of this would have been possible without the help of his team of sherpa helpers who all had their own unique skills. They played an important role in this because many explorers who have used Sherpas in the past and in the present underpay them and make them nameless faces in the crowd that are underappreciated, but this was not the case in Nims's film. He made sure that each member had screen time and was paid amply compared to the lack luster wages Western expeditions typically pay them.
So already Nims is a commendable figure, and this is before he does anything amazing. Once he starts climbing mountains, they give some background on Nims and some of his accomplishments outside of the mountain climbing world, and he is a very impressive figure. Many of these mountains have morbid reputations. Numerous people have died in attempting to climb them. Everest might be the tallest mountain, but it was not the most challenging. K2, the second tallest mountain, has a much worse reputation than Everest, and it was not the only one with a worse reputation. What is even crazier is that the team managed to climb many of these mountains in one day and hung over. These expeditions typically take days if not a week to complete were being sprinted through by this team of experts. The last peak to be reached had an added obstacle to it. It was in Tibet, and China said that it was closed for the season, so Nims had to fight the Chinese Bureaucracy to be able to climb the peak, which is an impressive accomplishment on its own. This was not quite on the level of Free Solo, but it was close. The only problem was that it was too short, they had more time to spend on the climbing or developing the story in different ways. It felt a little rushed, but it was so incredible otherwise the wanting of more is one of the better critiques to have about a project.
Another adventure documentary that I watched was Being Cousteau. This was the story of Cousteau’s life from his falling in love with the ocean to his death. He was an incredible figure with an interesting background. When he first started exploring the sea, he really had to dredge up finances. At one point his only option to continue living the life he wanted was to help find oil in the depths of the sea. Later in his life he became one of the staunchest proponents of protecting the sea. So, it is odd to think that he is both very influential in the deep sea drilling that has caused so much harm to the oceanic environment, and then he becomes one of the biggest people against it, even though that is how he initially was getting money. There were also some videos of him and his crew mistreating wildlife and not being very conservation minded when they were young. It speaks to the ability for a person to change. It is a lesson that many people, especially politicians can learn from. Money is not everything, at some point one's morality must take over, and Cousteau was a great example of this. Although he has a legendary reputation, it is questionable as to how happy he was. He did not really have a home, and his family was very fragmented due to him constantly being at sea, so he was not able to create those close bonds with his sons, he was too into his work and trying to make a global change. The entertainment value was lacking in this documentary, it did have its moments, but one’s time would be more well spent watching Life Aquatic, which is basically a Cousteau parody.
Finally, HBO has been releasing a collection of music documentaries called Music Box. They started in the Summer with Woodstock 99, but all the other releases have come out in the past month. Jagged was an intimate look at Alanis Morrisette. It went deep into her past, and specifically her rise to fame and her first album. Apparently, it was too intimate because after its production, she refused to endorse the film, but it was produced and released, nonetheless. Next was DMX: Don't Try to Understand, which mediocre. It documented the year after DMX was released from jail, and the tour that he started to go on and his new deal with the record company. It was a little depressing because the viewer sees DMX spending time with his kids and family, but he dies shortly after this was done filming, so it was hard to think that some of these interactions were the last that people would have with him. There was Listening to Kenny G, which was my favorite. Kenny G was an interesting person to examine. For someone whose music seems so tame, apparently it is very divisive. There were plenty of people that hated his music. That did not stop him from rising to the top of the charts multiple times. The music professors that appear to give their opinions of his music while they listen to it in real time were harsh but informative. They felt like there was a lack of talent showing through, but it is hard to argue with his success. Robert Stigwood was the subject of the newest release, and it was terrible. He was the producer behind many musicals and has an incredible reputation, but the documentary was dull and fell flat. There is still one documentary to be released in the next week about Juice WRLD.
The innovation of documentaries has been incredible. There are documentaries about almost every topic out there now, and with video taking abilities at almost everyone's fingertips, it makes it easier to gather footage to make something incredible. From this selection of documentaries, I highly recommend watching 14 Peaks and The Rescue. Both were incredible and compelling. They will have you on the edge of your seat and feeling inspired.
Post-Script: So, you can clearly tell I have strong affinity for climbing films, and I just found another one after I finished writing this, and I would be remiss not to include it. The Alpinist, which is now on Netflix, is another climbing documentary about Marc-André Leclerc, and like Free Solo, it is about a climber that prefers to climb without a rope, but he is doing more than climbing ordinary rocks. He is also climbing ice walls and going through snow to get to his peaks, not to mention that many of these ascents are on sight, which means he has no prior experience climbing them before. So, whereas Alex Honnold had every move of El Cap memorized before free soloing it, this guy is going in relatively blind. It is truly amazing and terrifying. The moments of silence of Marc-André Leclerc climbing make you hold your breath and stare intently at every move he makes to make sure it is not his last. There is something so beautiful in watching someone do something that they so deeply love and find fulfillment in doing.
Other Movies This Week:
Brave: A story of reconciliation and being non-judgmental of how others live their lives.
Evil Dead: Disgusting, disturbing, and creepy. Can you survive the night?
Evil Dead II: A deeper dive into the over-the-top antics that worked well enough in the first one but sunk the second one. I mean he had a chain saw for a hand. How did people rank this one better than the first?
C’mon C’mon: An uncle must watch his gifted and eccentric nephew for a while. A beautiful and complicated bond forms, and it plunges the depths of mental and emotional health. The weight of emotional baggage is immense, and it is okay to not be okay. "No more screen time today.
New Movie Rankings:
Brave: 3.5 Stars
C’mon C’mon: 4 Stars
Evil Dead: 4 stars
Mr. Saturday Night: 1.5 Stars
Evil Dead II: 2 Stars
The Alpinist: 4.5 Stars
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