Oscar-winning film director Chai Vasarhelyi talks to Victoria Heath about her film Endurance, human resilience & the spirit of exploration
Chai’s travel insights
• Humans explore because of our innate desire to belong and be understood
• Endurance is relative: what may be difficult for one person is easy for another
• Teamwork and camaraderie are what matter
It’s a rainy day in London. Film director Chai Vasarhelyi explains that her children are jet-lagged and don’t want to visit the museum they’d planned to explore. She laughs a little at the irony of their complaints.
Chai’s documentaries – from the nail-bitingly tense Free Solo, documenting Alex Honnold’s successful ropeless climb of El Capitan’s 900-metre rock face, to Nyad, a film about the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida – are all characterised by large-scale human endurance. But, as Chai’s anecdote highlights, endurance is at the heart of what we all do every day.
Whether it’s begrudgingly going to a museum or scaling a mountain, perseverance is the thread that silently weaves most human action together – and crucially, all forms of it are valid.
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‘I’m not one to judge anyone else’s ability to persevere, because I think there are a lot of people who endure a lot silently and suffer,’ she says.
Her latest work, Endurance, is an example of one of the best- known cases of endurance and survival in exploration history. The documentary retells the story of Ernest Shackleton’s 20-month ordeal in the Antarctic – keeping all 27 crew members alive after losing their ship to pack ice – along with documenting the modern-day mission to find the shipwreck itself.
The journey that Shackleton made to find help, from Elephant Island and on to South Georgia, spanned icy seas across hundreds of miles. It’s a challenge in itself trying to understand exactly why and how Shackleton continued to instill hope in his comrades through every setback.
‘I think it’s about belonging,’ Chai says. ‘The desire to connect and be understood.’ For Shackleton, Vasarhelyi believes, was an outsider. He struggled to fit in: he was Irish, he was a merchant marine and not part of the Royal Navy. But, against all odds, he persevered, perhaps to prove himself to others, perhaps in part to also connect with the camaraderie and the men on his expedition.
When things got tough, the men aboard Endurance bonded. They put on plays, listened to music played on a banjo brought by one of the expedition members, and every Saturday, they drank toasts to their friends and loved ones back in England. They read books, trained their dogs, and even played games of football on the Antarctic sea ice. Far more than the name of Shackleton’s ship, then, Endurance characterises all of the actions of everyone, from the film’s start to its finish, and shows how relationships can be a firm basis from which such resilience can rise.
The relationship between endurance and humanness isn’t exclusive to Chai’s latest work; it features in many of her previous documentaries, too. Take Free Solo, which combines terrifying free-climbing scenes with a blossoming love story at its centre. Or Nyad, which showcases not only a record-breaking swim but also the importance of strong friendships.
The message that these films impart is far quieter than the high-octane premises that initially draw us in. The protaganists in her films are both surprising yet familiar. These are people who perform incredible, awe-inspiring feats, but they’re also people with comrades, lovers and friends. They are, when all is said and done, human.
It’s not a stretch, then, to say that our desire for exploration – whether you’re an explorer such as Shackleton, Honnold or Nyad, or an everyday tourist – is tied in with a desire to connect with others. To find a sense of belonging, and to be part of a community. And maybe it’s the relationships formed along the way that we lean on to find the strength to endure.
‘I think Endurance asks questions about how we connect with one another, and the kinds of kindness we can show one another,’ says Chai. ‘It’s about where one can find strength.
‘There are lots of psychological and emotional questions that Endurance raises, but I think the main point is that human beings are pretty freaking tough.’
