Thanks DSP. Simon must be delighted with all these great reviews knowing that his work has been so well received especially with the Australian audiences. So happy for him.
Surfing films are few and far between. For every legitimate classic like 'Big Wednesday' by John Milius and John Stockwell's 'Blue Crush' (a personal favourite), there are plenty of duds, like Morgan O'Neill and Ben Nott's 'Drift', Curtis Hanson's 'Chasing Mavericks' and Sean McNamara's 'Soul Surfer'. Genre films with surfing themes, like 'Point Break' or 'The Shallows', usually achieve more success.
The new surfing film ‘Breath’ is the directorial debut of Australian actor Simon Baker, who shot to fame in Hollywood as the star of the TV show ‘The Mentalist’. Based on author Tim Winton’s Miles Franklin Award-winning novel, it's a coming-of-age story about two teenage boys, Pikelet (Samson Coulter) and Loonie (Ben Spence).
Bruce Pike and Ivan Loon are both lonely misfits in a small timber town near the West Australian coastline who befriend each other one summer swimming at the river and dare each other to more and more extreme exploits. When they ride to the coast on their bikes and see the local lads surfing, they know they have to give it a try. Before long they draw the attention of Sando (Simon Baker, ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, ‘L.A. Confidential’), a mysterious older surfer and adventurer who takes them under his wing and encourages them to try more and more extreme surf. It’s the 70s and Sando and his depressed American wife Eva (Elizabeth Debicki, ‘The Great Gatsby’, ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2'), are living a hippie lifestyle in a house set in the bush where Eva is also trying to overcome her own demons.
This story is many things. It follows Pikelet and Loonie as they move through adolescence. It is also about the attraction of extreme sport, the addiction to the endorphin and adrenalin rush that is hard to satisfy away in retirement, and it is about the dangers of idolising those who seem adventurous and attractive to us. It is also the story of relationships: between Pikelet and Loonie, Pikelet and Sando, Loonie and Sando, Sando and Eva and Pikelet and Eva.
Richard Roxburgh (in his third Tim Winton film adaptation after ‘In the Winter Dark’ and ‘The Turning’) and Rachael Blake (‘Gods of Egypt’, ‘Sleeping Beauty’) turn in finely-tuned performances as Pikelet’s parents, who watch their boy mature into manhood before their eyes. Baker handpicked amateur actor Samson Coulter after specifically seeking someone who could handle himself on a surfboard to play Pikelet. The similarly inexperienced Ben Spence was cast as Pikelet’s scene-stealing larrikin mate, Loonie. Both Coulter and Spence are fantastic as the scruffy coastal teenagers, particularly when you consider their inexperience and the complexity of their roles.
For those unfamiliar with his work, Tim Winton is an extremely evocative and descriptive writer. Reading his novel, you can see the waves, feel the pull of the surf, be dazzled by the shards of light as the wave crashes and breaks into pieces. His descriptions are beautiful, not in a romantic sunset-on-waves type of way, but in a tough and muscular way. He doesn’t talk about frolicking in the surf, he talks about the breathlessness that comes from a hold down to the point of blackout after a fall from a wave the size of a house.
To deliver this visually, Simon Baker called upon water cinematographer Rick Rifici to shoot the surf and underwater scenes. The results are awe-inspiring (the majority of filming took place in Denmark, Western Australia, and features well-known local landmarks Elephant Rocks and Greens Pool as well as the infamous surf break, The Right). A single continuous take of Ben Spence surfing a left-hander across the face of a wave as it rushes past a stationary camera, and then back up over the lip of the wave as it breaks, paddling towards the camera again (while delivering dialogue!), had my jaw agape.
Winton’s novel is narrated by Pikelet as a divorced, middle-aged paramedic - the novel opens with him attending the scene of a suicide. A kid has hanged himself, taken his last breath, and denied himself all others. It’s a mess. But the experience prompts Bruce to recall his own youth, with the story taking the form of a long flashback in which he remembers his childhood friendship with Loonie. Wisely, Baker’s film (narrated by Winton as an adult Pikelet) takes place entirely in the 70s as a more traditional, less grim coming-of-age tale, gradually morphing into a story of has-been sport stars trying to imbue knowledge and recapture past thrills by pushing his young devotees into rash and treacherous situations.
And then a character puts Fleetwood Mac’s 'Rhiannon' on the record player and ‘Breath’ shifts into a third gear…
The only major bum note of the film (and the novel, in my opinion) is the handling of Eva, Sando’s surly, troubled but ethereally beautiful wife whose role in the story is to usher Pikelet into manhood. Eva was an extreme skier but now has a blown knee. Consequently, she’s bitter because her husband still gets to do what he loves and because he’s not spending any time with her. Tired of being left alone, but probably unwilling to admit it, she seeks her own gratification in a way that changes the young man’s life. But she is a wounded woman and, like the surfers, needs to feel the rush of risk.
In the novel, Winton uses Eva as literary device to illustrate how deviant sexual practices can warp a teenage boy’s sexual awakening, affecting his later life and relationships. Baker (and his co-screenwriters Gerard Lee, ‘Top of the Lake’, and Winton himself) lightens this in the film adaption and vastly tones down the book’s graphic sex. But the end result still leaves Debicki in a predictable, fairly one-dimensional succubus role. When coupled with the fact that ‘Breath’ also loses the charismatic presence of Baker and Spence at this point in the story, focusing on the interior struggles of the more introverted Pikelet and his relationship with Eva, the air is knocked out of the film (pun intended) far too long before it's conclusion.
I left my screening of ‘Breath’ among a small crowd of people. Waiting for an elevator, I heard a woman next to me, in mid-conversation with her friend, murmur: "...yeah, I’ve read his books before so I was prepared for all that Madonna/whore stuff.”
Maybe I just hadn’t read enough Tim Winton to completely enjoy the entirety of the film, which is certainly confidently directed by Baker, features impressive performances, is often beautiful to look at, and respectful of the Miles Franklin Award-winning novel upon which it is based?
In any event, watching Simon Baker’s ‘Breath’ was like paddling out into pristine surf and catching a few big, clean waves for an hour, only for the skies to suddenly cloud over and the wind to change, forcing you to reluctantly ride some foam back to the shore. Hugely enjoyable up until it becomes strangely disappointing.
For those unfamiliar with the work of novelist Tim Winton, they should do all they can to get ahold of one of his books. His writing manages to capture a side of the Australian soul that is unrivaled in modern literature. His novel Breath is an example of his uncanny ability to convey the beauty of this land, especially of the western coast and the unique aspects of the tough, but endearing elements of the Australian culture.
On the other side of the Pacific, Simon Baker had the opportunity to read Winton’s creation and it took him home. Most people are unaware that the well-known actor is Australian himself and after reading the novel strived to acquire the rights to the book for a film. He desired to take on the central character of the surfing guru and mentor, Sando, but eventually realized that he should fulfill multiple roles of director, writer as well as the lead actor in the cinematic production.
The salty story of the surfing community of Western Australia during the early 1970’s focusses on two young mates who discover the thrill and euphoria of riding the coastal waves. Pikelet (Samson Coulter) and Loonie (Ben Spence) have been friends for years and take on each new adventure with the passion and enthusiasm of teen boys with wild abandon.
After securing their first boards and while riding back to town they come in contact with Sando (Baker) who lives in a secluded surf shack near the beach with his wife, Eva (Elizabeth Debicki). The young pair discovers that this reclusive surfer is a worldwide phenomenon on the waves and he takes a liking to the risk-taking boys. The seasoned mentor begins to show them the physical and spiritual aspects of riding on the swells of the ocean and along the way they learn how his wisdom applies to their lives.
The on-screen experience could be labeled a coming-of-age film or a beautiful surfing film, but the real heart of the story portrays the importance of relationships and being comfortable with the limitations of life. Baker manages to show his true cultural heritage by making Winton’s story his own and providing an immersive experience that shows his love of Australia, the era he grew up in and the uniqueness of the surfing community.
As his directing debut, he stated that it was vital for him to tell a story that was close to his heart. Every choice made seems to be done with care and consideration from the lighting to the type of boards they used in the surf. Baker chose to use the actual actors for surfing the waves and not utilize any green-screen technology for the action sequences. This subtle detail even came down to his casting choices, especially the first-time actors who portrayed Pikelet and Loonie. Coulter and Spence are accomplished surfers who prove to have the acting chops to make the whole narrative come together. These two young talents deliver many of the most influential scenes in the film and benefit from fantastic support from Baker and Debicki who manage to encapsulate their characters well.
Fans of The Mentalist may find some of the content rather confronting. One aspect of Tim Winton’s writing that causes Australian audiences to embrace his work is his raw depiction of the worlds he creates. His storylines contain the real language of the culture that he wants to portray and Breath includes some confronting scenes of the sexual exploits of some of the central characters. This course use of language and physical side of humanity will make this less accessible to some audience members, but these elements do show the multi-layered world the famed author is trying to depict.
Simon Baker has managed to find the right tale for his directorial debut, his role in front and behind the camera proves to be an exceptionally personal journey. He delivers a film that opens the world to an aspect of Australian culture, the human experience of relationships and the importance of every aspect of life in our personal growth. Beyond some of the mature content, this is a visually beautiful film that manages to touch the heart of humanity.
Director Simon Baker on making an Australian first-time feature after two decades acting in the US.
You’ve heard of the saying ‘write what you know’? Well, it also applies to debut feature directors, says Breath’s director, star, co-writer and co-producer Simon Baker.
Baker was first sent Tim Winton’s novel Breath by veteran Hollywood producer Mark Johnson (Breaking Bad, Rain Man) who was interested in turning it into a film.
Baker, who grew up in coastal NSW town Lennox Head, says it had a “profound effect” on him.
“It felt very familiar and very close to me,” he remembers.
“I know now after this experience that on your first film I think it's very, very important that you work on something you know well and you feel very confident [in].
“It's going to help you make millions of decisions that you need to make in keeping the thing on the rails and going forward in the right direction. It was something that I felt I knew pretty well and that gave me confidence.”
Set in mid-70s Australia, it stars newcomers Samson Coulter and Ben Spence as teenagers who form an unlikely friendship with an enigmatic surfer (Baker) and his wife (Elizabeth Debicki), who push them to take risks in this coming-of-age drama.
Baker co-produced Breath along with Johnson and Jamie Hilton, and he also co-wrote the feature alongside Winton and Top of the Lake writer Gerard Lee. As such, by the time it came to making the film, he had lived and breathed the story for so long, his vision for it was incredibly clear.
Even then, the shoot presented some unique challenges – not just for a debut feature director, but for any director.
Here are some of Baker’s observations from his time making Breath:
SHOOTING IN THE SURF Marden Dean was the cinematographer for Breath, but a specific water cinematographer – Rick Rifici – was brought on to capture the incredible surfing scenes, which provide pivotal moments for Pikelet (Coulter) and Loonie (Spence).
“We used one camera and we had one cinematographer,” Baker says of those shots (it was filmed on a RED at 6K).
“We were a small footprint. It was not a big crew, so we were fluid and flexible and able to be very nimble because you are at the mercy of Mother Nature and it can turn on you like a robber's dog.”
The film, which has a raw, realistic and pared-back aesthetic, took inspiration from photography of the time.
“Because the film's set in the 70s, a lot of the photography was sort of based on the style of surf photography of that particular period. So a lot of it was in the water and focal lengths were pretty similar to a lot of surf images from that period, which simplified it.”
They also made capturing those shots a priority.
“We had four weeks of having our water crew there ready and available and when we got the right conditions we would drop everything and jump over and shoot the scenes that are in the film. We had to drop the whole main unit and just jump into the water,” he says
“Because principal cast members are in all those scenes, so there was no way we could farm it out.”
So even though in the story, many of those moments happen early in the day, they were filmed whenever they could get them. Baker says they just had to throw themselves into it.
“You can't will these things to happen. You’ve got to be patient and keep your wits about you and keep plodding away.”
But he also admits luck played a part. “If we didn't get the swell that we got, and the right wind directions and all of those things then I don't know what we would have done.”
TV vs FILM Baker has directed episodes of The Mentalist, which he starred in for seven seasons, and The Guardian. And he says the biggest difference between film and television has been time.
“When I would direct an episode of TV, I would have six days to prep it [but] I'd be prepping it while I was shooting an episode as an actor. So in a lighting turnaround I'd run over and do casting and then I'd… zip out at lunchtime and look at locations.” he says, adding that TV directors usually get seven full days of prep.
“And then I was cutting [the episode] while I was shooting the following episode, so it was always a pressure cooker.”
He says comparatively it was a “joy” to have eight weeks of pre-production and six weeks to shoot it.
“[Then there was] a substantial amount of time to completely engage in all the aspects of post-production, that are largely ignored for some reason but make cinema what it is, which is sound design and composing music and mixing,” he says.
The experience of making a film like Breath, he says, “it feels far more complete. And it's far more what your vision is, in a film.”
That said, he feels like the episodes of TV he’s directed are somewhat standalone pieces as well, even though they’re part of something bigger.
“If you ever saw any of the episodes of TV that I directed I made little movies anyway,” he says, which made the idea of his own feature even more thrilling. “I was pretty keen to really kick into the next gear with bigger scale stuff.”
CONTINUALLY WRITING Breath also marks Baker’s first screenwriting credit – he co-wrote the screenplay with the novel’s author Tim Winton and veteran screenwriter Gerard Lee. Winton would call Baker while he was in between takes on The Mentalist and they had a meeting in Perth about a year before cameras started rolling.
But even when the script was complete, Baker says the writing process doesn't stop.
“You're authoring the whole way through,” he says, often suggesting lines for the actors during production.
“When we were shooting there was a lot of spontaneity… By that point you know the story so well that all you're doing is just creating more potent moments to express who these characters are…
“Even in post-production (Breath was edited by Dany Cooper), because you're either [keeping] a line here or losing lines.”
WORKING WITH FIRST-TIME ACTORS
Baker was adamant they find actual surfers to fill the roles of Pikelet and Loonie, and a national campaign was started by Nikki Barrett casting, using both social media and traditional channels. After a year they had found the pair – Samson Coulter, from Sydney’s Northern Beaches, was to play Pikelet and Ben Spence, from WA’s Margaret River, would be Loonie.
Baker says as a director “you use every trick you can” to draw out the raw performances from the untrained actors.
“The main thing is you create an environment where they feel allowed to be able to be kids, to be themselves and you encourage that in their performances,” he says.
“Then it's really just about collecting moments and sticking them all together in the edit and trying to make the story cohesive.”
SHOOTING ON LOCATION IN WA
Winton gave permission to shoot Breath on the Californian coast, but Baker and Johnson were keen to keep it in Western Australia. “The coastline and the landscape in particular in our country, it really does help define who we are,” Baker says. “It shapes the way we live. And it certainly had a major impact on me and the formation of who I am now. So I think that's really one of the main characters in the film.”
During the writing process Baker would drive up and down the coast from Perth to Albany, searching for the beaches that would make up their location for Breath – which is when he came across the town of Denmark.
Geographically and in terms of the look, it was perfect. And thanks to assistance from Screen Australia and Screenwest, and government economic and social development agency Great Southern Development Commission, it made sense from a logistical and budget point of view too.
“[Tim’s] relationship in his writing to a sense of place is very strong,” Baker says on the decision to shoot on location.
“You can't fake that. You just can't. I mean why would you want to if you can do it? It's also cheaper because you're always dealing with a limited budget. So why not just get out there and do it.”
Breath is in Australian cinemas from 3 May. It’s distributed by Roadshow Films.
If he never makes another movie, Simon Baker can be proud of Breath. Most of the credit goes to Tim Winton's book, of course, but Baker has managed not to botch its adaptation to the screen – an achievement for an actor on debut as director. More than that, he has made a movie of sometimes transcendent beauty, about something rarely depicted on our screens.
I'm not talking about surfing, although that is part of the film's achievement: the stunning water footage captures what it's like to be out there, cold and fearful, on a swell that threatens mortality. I'm talking about relating the notion of beauty to the emotions of men, specifically Australian men. In Breath, we see men pursuing something higher, not lower.
In the book, surfing transforms Winton's young narrator, as he watches men "dancing themselves across the bay with smiles on their faces and sun in their hair… How strange it was to see men do something beautiful. Something pointless and elegant, as though nobody saw or cared."
The book is set on the coast of Western Australia where Winton learned to surf. His voice serves as narrator in a script adapted by Winton and Gerard Lee. Baker filmed around the town of Denmark, on the south coast near Albany, and it's an astonishingly powerful landscape: huge trees in thick, dank forests, rocky shores and cliffs plumed with seaspray. There's a sense of loneliness, wildness and impermanence – as though the small shacks clinging to the land could be blown away any minute by a whim from Antarctica. And this is where men and boys go into the cold hard water for fun?
The setting is the 1970s. Pikelet (Samson Coulter) and Loonie (Ben Spence), two 13-year-olds, stare out at the waves and wonder if they could do that. They have already taught themselves the basics when an older man with saltwater-bleached hair and a Kombi ute takes them under his wing. Sando (Simon Baker) lives just back off the beach with his mysterious American girlfriend Eva (Elizabeth Debicki), who's sullen. The boys don't care: they are just grateful they can leave their boards in Sando's shed, and not have to carry them home on their bicycles.
Pikelet is shy, bookish and sensitive – a good student with a level head and loving parents (Richard Roxburgh and Rachael Blake). Loonie is wild and funny and untethered: his father, the publican in their small town, biffs him often. They're an unlikely pair, except that Loonie is fearless and Pikelet wishes he was. Surfing becomes their path to manhood – the place where they learn to manage their fears. Sando becomes their zen master, teaching them the water arts: how to read swells and weather, how to be in the moment, how to feed off the fear.
It would be easy to ruin Sando with too much soul-surfer mysticism – and there was a lot of that about in the 1970s – but Baker only gives us a little. He concentrates on bringing out strong performances from the boys, whose characters are looking for role-models. Eva may wonder why her grown man is so interested in these weeds, but she's too consumed by her own crippling leg injury to care.
Baker builds up two distinct worlds: land and sea. On land, life can be dull and painful, bounded by rules and duties. At sea, on their ugly salvaged boards, the boys experience freedom, exhilaration, transcendence… the pointless elegance that Winton writes about. Aussie films have always been obsessed with masculinity, but not in this way. Our national cinema offers a hundred different ways to be a bloke: fewer depictions of being young and lost, full of fear and yearning, brimming with potential but not judgment. The book takes Pikelet's story to a dark place; the film softens that. Except for one unnecessary and jarring shot near the end, Baker hardly puts a foot wrong. It helps that he grew up surfing, and that he has waited for the right story.
There is something bigger here than simple coming-of-age, although there is that too. It's a film about the cracks in our masculinity, rather than the thing itself. There's disappointment, disillusion, the harsh realisation that adults have to make hard decisions. It's a grown up film about youth, in that sense, and unexpectedly moving.
The ADG Awards were established in order to celebrate the outstanding achievements and contributions by Australian Directors, and are the only peer-judged awards for directors in Australia. Held in Melbourne, the awards celebrate excellence in the craft and art of directing across film, television, documentary, animation and interactive media.
Simon Baker adapts Tim Winton’s coming-of-age novel for his directorial debut
When Tim Winton’s latest novel, The Shepherd’s Hut, was released in March, he departed from the traditional book launch with a series of keynotes on the topic of “toxic masculinity”. “Boys and young men are so routinely expected to betray their better natures,” said Winton, “to smother their consciences, to renounce the best of themselves and submit to something low and mean.”
Winton described the culture on the ocean’s swell, where each evening several male generations commune in the lulls between waves. These boys “rehearsing their masculinity” could be any of the suffering surfers who’ve populated the littoral author’s writing since he won the Vogel in 1981. Yet it feels jarring to recast Winton’s melancholic characters in the parlance of contemporary feminism – say, Lockie Leonard from the ’90s YA novels or Vic Lang of short story collection The Turning (2004) – who often seem frozen in their time.
None are more emblematic of these latent tender hearts than Bruce Pike and Ivan Loon from the Miles Franklin-winning novel Breath (2008), both trying on postures of macho bravado. Simon Baker’s faithful new screen adaptation makes what Winton calls the “shackle[s of] misogyny” plain. Best known for his lead acting role in long-running US police procedural The Mentalist (2008–2015), Baker’s directorial debut is a nostalgic portrait of two boys floundering on the precipice of a dangerously adult world.
We meet “Pikelet” and “Loonie” (played by real-life grommets Samson Coulter and Ben Spence) wrestling in the water with a tactile affection soon to be expunged. Any misconception they’re on the cusp of manhood is struck out by the sight of their fragile bodies – these are the lithe limbs of children, more likely to grow up to be the skinny ratbags of Rennie Ellis’ 1984 Life’s a Beach series than the bronzed Adonis of Max Dupain’s Sunbaker (1937).
Winton’s writing has tended to make for middlebrow cinema, most recently in the underwhelming 2013 anthology film The Turning. Phillip Noyce, who eventually abandoned an adaptation of Dirt Music, claimed that “a poetic novel is just difficult to translate into a movie”. Baker is better than most at capturing the original novel’s mood – with an adult Pikelet narrating his bygone youth – but the film’s alignment of the liminal shoreline with adolescence is a familiar trope of Australian cinema. Here it’s more the subterranean menace of Blackrock (1997) than the kitsch critique of Puberty Blues (1981).
Cinematographer Marden Dean renders an eternal coastal winter, with sand-weathered clapboard houses washed out in hazy blues and yellows. Beyond the break lies an escape from small-town tedium, whether it’s Pikelet’s “ordinary” parents (played by Richard Roxburgh and Rachael Blake) or the covert fury of Loonie’s father (Jacek Koman). In quiet moments the boys’ legs jiggle manically, thrumming with the pent-up energy of puberty. Surfing becomes an extension of their intensifying competition, with the reckless Loonie urging Pikelet out into deeper waters
Soon they’re taken under the wing of Sando (played by Baker himself, with charm and vague threat), an experienced surfer who braves the waves others cower at: Old Smoky, Barney’s, and the mythic Nautilus. Sando grows larger in the boys’ adulation, relishing the role of briny mage, expounding half-baked philosophies ripped from the pages of surfer’s bible Tracks about living in the moment and surrendering to the water. “You’re completely alive. It’s just like you felt the hand of God,” he tells his audience of two. “That’s fucken’ hippie shit,” says Loonie, who tries to pretend he’s not under Sando’s spell. Sando soon plays the boys off against one another, using his fickle approval to rupture their bond.
The sighs of Sando’s wife Eva (Elizabeth Debicki) imply she knows this routine well. Flaxen haired and stormy, she’s blurred around the edges. Her secret lies in a mangled leg, a heavy symbol of her woundedness that she’s forced to lug around. There’s some half-hearted attempts to colour her in: a frustrated athlete with just as many yearnings as the boys around her. It’s tempting explain away her haziness as symptomatic of Pikelet’s limited vision, but surely the grown man looking back could see her sharper details.
Dare we compare Eva to the ocean: mercurial, quicksilver, her siren song luring Pikelet to perilous depths? The freedom bestowed by woman and water come at a cost, the longing to escape urging the boys on towards annihilation. Eros and Thanatos, desire and death, and all that. Water cinematographer Rick Rifici shows waves exploding into inverted mushroom clouds beneath the surface, sucking young limbs under with all the ocean’s wrath.
There’s divinity in the waves, too, which we know because a celestial beam literally parts the clouds to bless them. Breathtaking aerial shots of these boys in motion are the closest they’ll ever get to transcendence, captured with all the wonder of surf classics like Morning of the Earth (1972). Looking down the wave’s magnificent face, there’s genuine suspense when the boys’ skinny frames disappear into a curling barrel and we don’t yet know if they’ll emerge on the other side. “Never had I seen men do something so beautiful,” says Pikelet.
Breath charts the fork in Pikelet and Loonie’s road, where their lives could’ve taken a different turn if only somebody noticed them. Baker clearly sees grace in these lost boys, in their inchoate longings for something more. In his recent speeches Winton said that this is the first step towards dismantling toxic masculinity – to find such boys “worthy of our interest”. It’s ironic that when Baker does so, Eva is invariably drowned out.
