“How deep will you dive in pursuit of something that’s always out of reach? You’ve just helped rescue a dozen Thai schoolchildren and their teacher from a perilous underwater cave! What are you going to do next?”
“I’m going back into an underwater cave!”
It sounds like an ad for Disney World, only kinda nuts, because who would want to return to the scene where the lives of 13 people were in your hands?
Meet Richard “Harry” Harris.
From an early age, Harry became fascinated with diving, as revealed in Jennifer Peedom’s documentary. He had formed a deep bond with his father who did not fathom Harry’s obsession. Truth be told, neither did Harry. Something about diving underwater appealed to him, though, on a fundamental level, even now, he is hard pressed to explain.
His medical training as an anaesthesiologist and his diving experience combined when the Thai kids were trapped, by heavy rainfall and flooding, in an underwater cave for more than a week in 2018, miles from the mouth of the cave. More than 100 divers snd thousands of people were involved in the search.
In the aftermath of following Harry’s plan to sedate the boys and float them unconscious to the cave opening, he was acclaimed a hero, but not being the type of a person to seek fame, he dodged the attention as much as possible.
Jennifer Peedom’s film is invigorating, not from the inherent danger but from the inward courage to tackle such an experience. Its thrill-seeking on another level. Harry knows the danger but he must do it anyway, in spite of the danger. DEEPER captures that feeling, that emotion, that drive, perfectly.
The cave system, in a remote part of NZ, lies dark, cold, mysterious, potentially the deepest dived cave in the world. Diving’s siren call reached out to him, and he teamed-up with long time buddies to dive into a cave system in New Zealand.
In the past few years, a new trope in documentaries has emerged. A cornerstone of this genre of documentaries, is the psychology of the film’s subjects. The emotional and physical stakes of the expedition are leaned -on heavily in the film’s beginning, with setbacks and errors, but everything goes swimmingly for the final dive which has just enough stress to make for a dramatic watch. Harry does get vulnerable in attempting to explain why he’s drawn to cave diving.
DEEPER is a riveting and textured portrait of one’s quest to dive into uncharted depth of self purpose. This expedition is not merely a thrill- seeking escapade but a profound journey into the depth of his own psyche. DEEPER certainly encapsulates the essence of adventure but taps a richer vein of collaboration and camaraderie. Its not only a stunning visual odyssey into the Earth’s depth but illustrates that transformative journeys lead us not just into the unknown, but back to a greater understanding of ourselves.
