‘The stakes are so different’: Endurance filmmaker on finding Ernest Shackleton’s iconic lost ship in a new documentary on Disney Plus
During the pandemic, when we were all stuck indoors distracting ourselves with Wordle and baking endless sourdough loaves, a new discovery was made that took the whole world by storm: Sir Ernest Shackleton’s three-masted sailing ship ‘Endurance’ was finally found where it sank in 1915 underneath the ice of Antarctica.
Nicknamed ‘the Titanic of polar exploration vessels’, the wreckage caught the attention of a lot of people, including the adventure filmmaking duo Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin from behind some of the best Disney Plus movies like Free Solo, Meru, and The Rescue, who immediately set out to start capturing the epic discovery.
With the help of Natalie Hewit, who was onboard the Endurance 22 Expedition to document the locating of the wreckage of the HMS Endurance in March 2022, the duo have made a new film called Endurance with National Geographic that tells the story of both the historical and modern-day expeditions.
The new National Geographic documentary mixes restored archival clips with present-day footage filmed from aboard the 2022 expedition as well as interviews with the likes of the present-day expedition leader Dr John Sears and reenactments of Shackleton and his crew to bring all the elements of the historical piece together.
Like all their previous films that cover daring feats, whether it’s climbing without ropes up a mountain or rescuing 12 boys and their soccer coach from being trapped inside a flooded cave, Vasarhelyi and Chin seem to be endlessly fascinated with the human condition of survival. “Having the audacity to have these crazy dreams and then having the chutzpah, the courage, the ingenuity to see it through,” is what connects each of their stories.
It’s the running theme throughout their projects and The Endurance is no different. “I think it fits in [to our filmography] well,” Vasarhelyi tells TechRadar on reflection. “It’s different in terms of the craft that was required, and that’s kind of the fun part about being a filmmaker: you get to try different things.”
What is the story of The Endurance about?
For those unfamiliar with Shackleton, he was an Irish adventurer who made three expeditions to the southern continent during what’s known as the ‘Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration’, the last of which was the titular ‘Endurance’ journey that set out to make the first land crossing of Antarctica.
Shackleton recruited an eclectic crew of 27 men, 69 sled dogs, and one cat for the 1,800-mile-long journey across Antarctica, but unfortunately, the ship never reached its destination after getting trapped in the pack ice and eventually sinking. Left, stranded on the ice, Shackleton and his crew managed to reach Elephant Island but the barren castaway land wouldn’t let them survive for long.
In a heroic last-ditch effort, Shackleton took five men and sailed a lifeboat 800 miles across some of the most treacherous waters to the island of South Georgia to find help, and even though it took him several attempts to get back to the marooned crew, he persevered, saving all 27 crew mates that had been aboard the Endurance.
It’s a thrilling story and one that has been turned into movies and documentaries before (Liam Neeson narrates the 2000 film The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition), but Endurance is the only one to capture the full tale, from the start of the original expedition to its rediscovery in 2022.
Vasarhelyi says she and her husband Chin have always been fascinated by the Shackleton story. “It’s one of the great survival stories, and [while] we both had different reasons why it spoke to us, the question always was, how to justify a contemporary retelling.”
As soon as the vessel was found, it was clear to them. “It solves a mystery that has never been solved before. It’s also an amazing historical artifact,” giving them more than enough reason to make this incredible new documentary.
Using technology to bring the story to life
One of the crew onboard the first Endurance was a shipmate named Frank Hurley, who documented the journey with pictures and video using one of the first motion-picture cameras available in 1914 to make what is considered to be the world’s first documentary South.
The silent film was painstakingly restored by the BFI for the documentary Endurance and is stunning to see as it brings the story to life. “It wouldn’t be as amazing without Frank Hurley’s photographs of life aboard the ship. The details of it, for me as a documentarian, were really exciting: how the past can speak to the present and how together they articulate something about our exploration is exciting,” Vasarhelyi says.
When it came to narrating these parts of the footage, instead of casting voice actors to read from the found diaries of the crew Vasarhelyi and Chin decided to work with a speech synthesis software company called Respeecher to recreate their voices using AI. With fragments of the crew’s voices, the algorithm was able to recreate what they would have sounded like and the end result is truly impactful.
Vasarhelyi – like many of us I’m sure – is moved by the epic journey. “This story really speaks to what makes us human, which is an audacity to believe in the possible and the grit and courage to see it through. To imagine how these men survived for over two years in the most inaccessible place in the world for over two years is incredible. It speaks to what’s amazing about being human. I’m excited for audiences to see it. I think it’ll be a great film to watch over the holidays.”
Endurance will be available to stream on Disney Plus on November 2.