Perhaps some books aren't meant to be adapted for the screen. Or at least not on your first attempt as a feature director.
Simon Baker is a renowned Australian actor best known for his work on US TV shows like The Mentalist and The Guardian, and somewhere in that busy schedule he's found time to hunker down with Tim Winton to adapt the author's Miles Franklin-winning novel Breath.
A perilous enterprise akin to riding the giant wave in the book, known as Old Smokey.
Breath is a layered, angular novel about small town boys growing up in 1970s South Western Australia who come under the spell of a Svengali-like surfing ace and his reclusive American wife.
Its first-person adult narrator offers a sober assessment of its events, in particular his first sexual experience and how it caused great psychological harm in successive years.
But the film — also co-written with Top of the Lake screenwriter Gerard Lee — eschews much of this emotional framework. It condenses the plot into a more straightforward coming-of-age tale about a sensitive teenager, Pikelet (Samson Coulter), his reckless, mop haired best friend Loonie (Ben Spence) and the glamorous but troubled hippy couple living on the edge of town — Sando and Eva — played by Baker himself and Elizabeth Debicki.
In the book, this pair are described with barely contained scorn by Winton — his deeply pragmatic, Christian worldview seemingly suspicious of their alternative spirituality and class privilege.
The critique is barely noticeable in the film.
Baker is a little too likeable to have a sinister side, perhaps, and lacks any alpha male menace, while Debicki isn't given the scope to fully develop what makes her so dark and damaged.
Only occasionally does the transposition from page to screen find transcendence in cinema's shorthand and dynamism.
A shot of Pikelet's father (Richard Roxburgh) watching his son dolefully from the back door, knowing he's losing him to Sando's surrogate figure, speaks as eloquently as any paragraph of prose.
The wave-riding sequences shot by water cinematographer Rick Rifici are also impressive, and even if the images of exquisitely curled waves and sublime underwater scapes aren't particularly original, their raw power has an undoubtable thrill.
The bro-triangle that develops out there between Pikelet, Loonie and Sando is held together by an instinctive respect and hierarchy, but it's also threatened by ego and rivalries, especially as Loonie's increasingly erratic bravado drives him further into the direction his name suggests.
But the real emotional curve ball of the story is thrown by Eva. (Spoiler ahead).
It's not something Winton foreshadows in the book, because he's more interested in power than eroticism, but Pikelet and Eva become lovers.
The film is faithful to this surprise turn, avoiding depicting chemistry brewing between them, which is a pity. It could have done with the momentum.
As it is, their torrid affair — whose perversion is symbolised in a sex game involving a red plastic bag that gives new meaning to the title — doesn't land with the crash it should.
Partly, it's down to Eva's underdrawn character.
Mostly, it's because the film doesn't translate the considerable time Winton spends describing how Pikelet sees her once they've become intimate: his desire for her, his indifference to her, his repulsion from her.
His confused viewpoint says a lot about his immaturity, and foreshadows the damage she will do.
It's a very difficult thing to peer inside the head of a character like a novelist does, and an inexperienced writer-director can't be blamed for coming up short.
Baker's film is however a perfunctory adaptation with only rare moments that shine.
The sophisticated ambivalence of the novel is lost in translation.
I didn't like the Jibe that the last one was though the read was good but its not everybody taste I'm not s surfer dude but I'm a fan of Simon so anything he does is alright with me.
News New Australian film Breath pulls more than $1m on opening weekend, can’t beat Avengers: Infinity War May 7, 2018
Australian film Breath finished its first weekend at the box office with more than $1m in earnings across 244 screens, coming in behind The Avengers: Infinity War and I Feel Pretty.
The film, an adaptation of Tim Winton’s novel Breath, finished at the weekend box office with $1.001m in earnings, just behind Amy Schumer’s film I Feel Pretty, which collected an additional $1.024m in its third weekend.
It might not be overstating it to suggest that Simon Baker has marked his directorial debut with an Australian classic.
Having not read the Tim Winton novel on which it is based (Cloudstreet was enough for me), I can’t comment on its faithfulness to the book, but Baker’s film, robust and tender, is a reminder that cinema can aspire to great art without he surf. Riding their bikes to the beach one day, they encounter the reclusive former champion boardrider Sando (Baker).
As Sando is at least twice their age and shacked up with Eva (Elizabeth Debicki), it could have been too much of a stretch to believe that he would be prepared to devote so much of his time to the boys. But he needs to be a guru to his acolytes as much as they are ripe for the lessons that he will impart to them. The other significant character in the drama is the ocean itself – and how beautifully shot it is by cameraman Rick Rifici.
Narrated by Pikelet the man in an elegiac voice (not unlike Gordie’s in Stand By Me), it is a coming-of-age story that digs deep into the male psyche, and heart. Pikelet (again, like Gordie) is sensitive and uncertain, not timid but also not prepared to indulge in the reckless bravado of his mate (and we have all knocked around with the appropriately named Loonie at some point).
The young actors are fantastic, as is Baker who plays it down in order to let them take centre stage. Eva is less clearly defined, but as the love-interest she is suitably ethereal and unknowable.
Complemented by Harry Gregson-Williams’s beautiful score, the period is perfectly captured (Pikelet asks his parents ‘can I please leave the table’ after he’s eaten his tea), as is the wonder and heavy portent of teenage years.
When a director can bring words of a novel to the screen and enchant the eye with images that could only be imagined from reading the novel, it is a tremendous escape. Director and Actor Simon Baker manages to give life for the big screen to Author Tim Winton’s award-winning novel, Breath. And what you have is a spectacular story so cleverly adapted for the screen with the visual splendour only a Winton novel and exceptional eye for detail from Baker’s direction could bring to life.
Set in a small coastal town in the 1970s are two young boys, the best of friends. One is quiet and calculated, Pikelet played by Samson Coulter. The other is loud and obnoxious, Loonie played by Ben Spence. Together they build their love for the ocean and start to learn to surf. After a chance meeting with an ex-pro surfer, Sando (Simon Baker) the boys take on some of the biggest waves that would frighten even the most expert of surfers.
With the different paths the boys start to take Sando and Loonie end up travelling through Indonesia while Pikelet is left on his own but not without company. Pikelet quickly starts to build an infatuation with Sando’s wife, Eva played by Elizabeth Debicki (Everest, The Night Manager, Guardians of the Galaxy 2). It doesn’t take long for the two to build a sexual relationship teaching Pikelet things he would never dream of.
First time film Director Simon Baker most known for his work as The Mentalist or The Guardian had his work cut out for him with Breath. Not only did Baker bring someone else’s written work to the screen he also had to convert what is a truly visual story to the extremes of the imagination. The visual splendour of this film is not one to be reckoned with. Thanks to the stunning coast line and town of Denmark in Western Australia, Baker was able to bring a whole new character to the screen alongside the talented actors.
While it was Baker’s first time directing, he was also having to direct first time actors Coulter and Spence. It is hard to think watching their performances on screen that they are anything but novices. Baker managed to tap into something with these boys and bring a unique naivety that might not have been possible with seasoned actors.
Samson Coulter despite surfing at elite levels managed to capture the character of Pikelet with absolute ease. There is one quote in the film & you’ve got this look. Like you’re expecting to lose something which absolutely nails Coulter’s performance. He is so far in his own head calculating every situation to the point he talks himself out of it. His performance is mesmerising to watch as he navigates adolescence and this crazy world of surfing and sexual awakening.
Ben Spence, another elite surfer played up to his character and utterly stole every scene he graced. From his opening few scenes his delivery and understanding of Loonie is frighteningly accurate. If he didn’t have you in stitches laughing because his lines were hilarious, it was his delivery of a simple line made side splitting hilarious. But beneath that is a very lost boy and what was interesting is he managed to hide it until he had these internal conflicts and you just caught a glimpse of what is going on in his head.
From the rugged bush landscape to the sweeping coast and amazing surf, Breath is a truly spectacular film. The story pulls you in and you don’t quite know where it will take you. As you find yourself immersed in the story line of each of the characters you are taken into another world. Watching the surf roll in, watching the rain poor throughout the bush you lose yourself in some pretty remarkable shots. The visual aspect of the film is ever as important as the story itself. It adds an entire new character that is so important to what it is the story is telling. Without something so special, you would be left with a film that doesn’t have any heart.
Overall this film is one truly special film to watch. While it does edge on the long side, it will encapsulate you and leave you with thoughts long after the film has ended. With the visual splendour of the ocean and coastal town it’s almost enough that you don't need the award-winning novel with its thick and juicy story lines to carry it through. But together they tell a simple story of life on the ocean and those crazy times in life where sometimes walking away is harder than following it through.
Soon after Breath won the 2009 Miles Franklin Award I bought a copy and put it in my bookcase. Life got in the way and Breath sat there until this April when I first heard of Simon Baker’s directorial debut in the movie by the same name. It was worth the wait. I devoured the book in a matter of days before seeing the film on release day at the Palace Theatre in Norton Street, Sydney.
I like to credit myself as a fan of Tim Winton before he became as acclaimed as he is now. My bookcase sports several of his pre-Cloudstreet works namely The Riders,That Eye The Sky, and In The Winter Dark. While I’m a little rusty on the storylines of these books after so many years, the feelings Tim Winton’s writing evoke in me have never faded. When I started in on Breath, these came rushing back to me with a force to rival the biggest waves ever ridden by Loonie, Pikelet and Sando.
I’m sure I can add nothing to the chorus of high praise Winton has consistently attracted over the years from more erudite literary types than myself. Nevertheless, I will try to accurately describe the emotional impact Tim Winton’s style of stringing words together has on me. Why? Because it is central to my mindset as I entered the cinema to see Breath on the big screen.
Winton writes in a straightforward way that is highly accessible to the reader while completely transcending the ordinary. His words are authentic, evocative and lyrical, without a hint of literary pretension. Early on in Breath, Pikelet – the book’s main voice – gives us this first insight into what can only be described as the beginnings of his and Loonie’s obsession with surfing:
I couldn’t have put words to it as a boy, but later I understood what seized my imagination that day. How strange it was to see men do something beautiful. Something pointless and elegant, as though nobody saw or cared.
‘Pointless and elegant’. It’s hard to think of a more apt description for a person jumping to their feet on a board while skimming down the face of a wall of water. The adult Pikelet goes onto say,
The way the swell rose beneath me like a body drawing in air. How the wave drew me forward…And though I’ve lived to be an old man with my own share of happiness for all the mess I made, I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living.
Breath is ostensibly a coming of age story but it’s a complicated one. Two teenage boys, growing up in the 1970s, are living in a dying mill town set on a placid river that flows to, but doesn’t quite connect with, the thundering surf beaches of Western Australia’s southern-most parts. Pikelet is the only child in a loving but dull working-class home. Loonie’s father is the local publican who tends towards violence and has already been through a couple of wives. Pikelet craves escape from the ordinary and Loonie’s devil-may-care temperament is just the ticket. They discover the sea and quickly become hooked on the rush of riding waves, bringing them into contact with the enigmatic former surfing champion Sando, and his secretive and surly American wife, Eva.
The visceral beauty in Winton’s words are always, always underpinned by a sense of foreboding. I’ve felt this in every Tim Winton book I have ever read and Breath is no exception. In the telling of ordinary things, like swimming in a river, riding bikes to the beach or sitting on the school bus, Winton keeps readers on the edge of their seats, wondering if this is moment where disaster will strike, and what form that disaster will take.
This inexorable sense of dread compels one to keep reading, to get to the bottom of whatever it is the author is trying to subliminally impart. Breath is so much more than a coming of age story. It is a deeply disturbing cautionary tale of addiction to the most potent substance of all – adrenaline. Sando was good at portraying the moment you found yourself at your limit, when things multiplied around you like an hallucination…And when he talked about the final rush, the sense of release you felt at the end, skittering out to safety in the beautiful deep channel, Eva sometimes sank back with her eyes closed and her teeth bared, as though she knew only too well.
There was a real opportunity to bugger up the film version of this complex, emerging- from-the-chrysalis-of-youth story. And I hoped beyond hope that Winton’s masterful command of the undercurrent of impending tragedy, like a storm brewing on the horizon, wouldn’t be lost in Breath’s translation to the screen.
Thankfully it wasn’t. The sense of foreboding was palpable in almost every scene, rendered in heartbreakingly beautiful images – like the white tops of heaving waves just visible over the sand bar behind which Pikelet and his father fish from their tinny, barely bobbing on the quiet river. Or how, after a severe wipe-out, Pikelet appears as a tiny, prone speck surrounded by white foam on top of a churning deep-blue ocean.
The backing track of pounding surf, Loonie’s hoot of triumph when he manages to catch hold of a passing ute for a drag-along on his bike; or the rattle of Sando’s combi van engine as it pulls up outside Pikelet’s house in a winter dawn, also plays an important part in this exquisite sense of dreadful anticipation. Coupled with a suitably efficient screenplay (thanks in no small part by Tim Winton’s input) Breath the movie certainly captures the foreboding undercurrent of the print version.
What it doesn’t do so well, in my humble opinion, is examine the vexing and multi-faceted nature of addiction, a powerful and devastating theme of Breath the book. While the references to addiction are frequent and obvious in the film, the relentless, life-threatening and ultimately life-ruining nature of addiction to processes (like extreme surfing and aerial skiing), as opposed to substances (such as Eva’s painkillers and perpetual hash-smoking) remains largely unexplored.
These are big issues, of course, and Breath is only an hour and fifty-five minutes long so one can hardly expect a dissertation. However, while I was slightly disappointed by this, my movie companion who had not read the book, was unperturbed. When she asked if the film was an accurate representation of Tim Winton’s book, what else could I say but yes?
Breath is a gob-smackingly beautiful and visually memorable film which I would advise you to see before you read the book. Peculiar advice coming from a publisher, I know, but there is method in my madness. This way, when you come to read Breath (which I also strongly advise you to do) you’ll get a second, bigger hit from the story, which is probably the point Tim Winton was trying to make all along.
Date: Saturday, 12-May-18, 8:43 AM | Message # 855
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I love the trailer! So exciting. It really must be a fantastic movie and I can't wait to see it. From what I've seen, Samson is the perfect choice for the part of Pikelit!
