A cave swallows everything: light, noise, sometimes even people. The director and screenwriter Jochen Alexander Freydank talks about this in the television two-part series Huge thing – every hour counts. Of course, it is also, or even primarily, the story of a spectacular rescue. But we’ve heard it before and we know it ends well.
In the summer of 2014, when the German national soccer team was about to become world champion, speleologist Johann Westhauser had a life-threatening accident in the Riesending Cave in the Berchtesgadener Land. Saving him seems impossible, and yet the endeavor succeeds. Eleven days after Westhauser was seriously injured by a falling stone, he was rescued from the cave on June 19, 2014 by an international team of helpers.
It had been the dominant theme in the media before the World Cup took off. Once you hear in huge thing the then national coach Löw from the radio, as he says Löwdinge. When they manage to set up a cave link system that enables communication through rock, a World Cup result is sent to a group of Croats underground.
Even if the story is well known, the film sucks you into the cave
Jochen Alexander Freydank serves in huge thing not a make-it drama. He knows his story holds no surprises. But he also knows that she can still grab you. Just as a fan still gets goose bumps when you look back at the move to make it 1-0 in the final, even though you know the ball will go into the goal.
The film sucks you into the cave. He recalls less facts than feelings. That a person with a skull injury lies deep in the mountain, in complete darkness, apart from the headlamps of his companions, at a place that even a local climber can reach from the cave entrance after 13 hours at the earliest – all this was reported at the time. Everyone painted it in their imagination.
Freydank and the cameraman Thomas C. Dirnhofer have now taken strong, real pictures for them in a cave region in Croatia, which demanded a lot from the entire team. Of course there are also a number of scenes above ground, from the coordination of the rescue operation, the weighing of the risks, the quarrels between mountain rescue service and cavers, from the media and political dimension of this emergency.
Down below it is dark, cramped, depressing, but sometimes also beautiful and sublime
However, this is not an alternative world to the one in the cave, but rather a complementary one. The loneliness of the actors, the responsibility that weighs on them, the almost complete absence of hustle and bustle and a calm that sometimes tips into paralysis – reflecting above and below.
Downstairs it’s dark, quiet, cramped, oppressive, and occasionally spooky. But sometimes also: beautiful and sublime. The cave that (allegedly) swallowed the researcher, it also swallowed the television audience. In a cave like this you leave a lot behind. For three hours it is the world in which one orients oneself, in whose limits, extensions and depths one has to fathom one’s thoughts and feelings.
Just like the figures – even those who never enter the cave. They are based on real models, even if the victim in the film is called Häberle and others are designed in such a way that the basic conflicts can be told well. Maximilian Brückner plays the hesitant leader of the mountain rescue service, Verena Altenberger a committed companion of the victim, Sabine Timoteo a courageous emergency doctor. Good actors and a good script come together here so that the viewer can take the characters seriously. Even the ripped-off journalist and the domineering ministry representative. They can also do their jobs well.
Huge thing – every hour counts, the first, December 28, 2022, 8:15 p.m.