A NY Daily News piece reminded me to review the movie Sanctum here on ‘a New Life’. The news piece describes the recent death of two University of Florida students while caving in Georgia. Absolutely tragic, and a sharp reminder of just how unforgiving caving, and cave diving is.

I saw James Cameron’s Sanctum this weekend. By way of overall movie quality, I give it a B. I feel like the storyline was lacking by way of engaging the audience from a dramatic perspective. However, the movie did not lack intensity at all – in fact it touched on every hair-raising incident one could have in a cave. Some pieces were far-fetched for sake of creating a cinematic appeal, but I could not escape the intensity. I think being a cave diver myself added to the appreciation for what the characters were experiencing.

 

The exploration team faces issues with entrapment, silt-outs, loss of masks, losing bailout cylinders, DCS, drowning, total loop failures on their rebreathers, loss of all primary and backup lights…and it goes on. Man, talk about a bad few days. Yet, in isolated instances, despite this intensity, we are shown that little bit of what drives true exploration – that is a connection with the environment where one finds an inner peace, and a driver to excel personally, as well as professionally.