I watched Breath yesterday (Friday) in Dallas,Texas...twice in one day! I'm going again on Monday! I could watch it on a loop all day, every day! Sooooooo beautiful! I was under its spell immediately! It was well worth the wait. I can't tell you how happy I am. Simon is a visionary.
So happy you liked it Kathy! I know some reviewers loved it, some others didn't. What do you think are Breath strongest and weakest moments?
Well, the sex scene with the little plastic bag was a bit superfluous, but I think it had to be incorporated somehow. That part was pretty brief. (Some people walked out after that scene) That said, it didn't take anything away from the rest of the story. I fell in love with those boys! My brother went with me, and Ben Spence(Looney) reminded him of a kid he grew up with here in Texas-who was exactly that crazy! (Reminds me a of a southern expression: what are a redneck's last words? "Hey watch this...... " This movie will resonate with a lot of humans all over the world, I hope! The ocean was it's own-and by far, the most exciting character in the movie! Completely mesmerizing. I hope you all will be able to see it on a big screen.
Hi KathyF lovely to hear from you and thanks for your review of Breath. So glad to hear you thought it was wonderful I just know I will feel the same. Some way or another we will hopefully get to see it here in the UK and until that time am happy to hear how much people are loving it.
Hi Tigglewink. I’m from the other end down south in Kent but my husband has lots of relatives up and around Scarborough which is I think near where you are so we go up a fair amount.
Hi Deedee. Yeah Scarborough is more north than me have you heard of Hull, Grimsby, Doncaster, Lincoln, Sheffield well they are the largest towns and cities around me. We are a small steel town in the middle. I have family who live down near Kent. I cannot wait to see Breath but as you will know we will not see it in the cinema here it will be on DVD but I don't mind at least I can see it over and over again in my own time. How are you well I hope it will soon be time for me to go to work I was just reading my emails before I went. What job do you do I work for my local Social Services at our local hospital as admin for the Hospital Social Work Team. I got to go now but please keep in touch its nice talking with you all.
Many thanks for your review of Breath KathyF and so glad you enjoyed it. It's nice to hear other fans views! Hopefully we will all get a chance to see it soon.
People keep asking me if I’ve seen the new Simon Baker surfing movie, Breath. It occurs to me that the people asking haven’t seen the movie. If they have, they would know it is not a surfing movie. It has a few tropes of surfing movies It has some really hot looking actors or some who will be in a few years (oh don’t #metoo me, I know what I’m saying) there’s the big wave that tests the moxie of the leading man err in this case adolescent young man and like most surfing films, music plays a critical role. Surfing has more than one thing in common with music—like music is all about timing but there’s practice, mastery, artistry and skill to the sport.
Based on the award-winning, international best-selling novel by Tim Wintonand set in the late 1970s Western Australia, Baker accomplishes something that is difficult in a narrative film. Recounted as a story from one character’s POV as an adult about his childhood, his awakening sexuality, what it means to be a friend, a son, a school-boy, to learn the skill of surfing, to trust adults, to learn that not all adults are worthy of trust but still are worthy of love and how to take a breath when it seems impossible to breathe. There’s a deliberate and tantalizing slowness to the film. Baker doesn’t want to rush us through this brief period of Pikelet’s (Samson Coulter) and Loonie’s (Ben Spence) childhood. He takes on the added challenge of directing as well as playing a supporting yet critical role in the film as both a mentor to the boys and an unwitting adversary to Pikelet.
Like a song that is impossible to dance to but easy to make love to, the film quite literally takes our breath away at he beginning, by plunging the two best friends into the water to see how long they can hold their breath without coming up for air. Breath is the second film in the past six months I’ve seen with the Fleetwood Mac song , The Chain, from their 1977 Rumors Album on the soundtrack. The earlier film was I Tonya. Please click the link to Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain before you continue or you’ll hate me. (Once you have it playing, keep reading.) According to my dear friend and talented musician, Lili, “The single beat of silence in the intro to the song is striking. It feels long, yet is just one beat out of many.” Every time I hear the song and I have heard it hundreds of times I always find myself catching and subsequently holding my breath at the beginning.
The thing about this particular song is that it is the only song that all five members of the band are given a writing credit for so it is technically an ensemble piece. The film is really Pikelet’s film but without the ensemble there is nothing to drive the narrative. The Chain was released on the Rumors album 41 years ago and seems impossible to imagine without all of the band members. I’m not planning on living another 41 years but I’m willing to bet one hundred dollars that it will keep popping up in films in perpetuity. Lili elaborates, “…instruments play for seven full measures, plus the first three beats of the eighth measure, followed by the single beat of silence.”
This part always kills me. It’s where Mick Fleetwood hits and then immediately silences the snare drum and the hi-hat on the third beat of the eighth measure that always makes me suck in my breath. “The instruments resume on beat one of the ninth measure, with vocals joining in soon after.” Bewildering the effect of the song on my nervous system but Lili says,”the choice of that steady driving, drumbeat, is a large part of what makes that silence effective, I think. It’s like a pounding heartbeat, and the suspension of that heartbeat stops everything, including your breath.”
The Chain is not an unsophisticated song. Though the lyrics may be deceptively simple, the execution of them is not. “Listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise. Running in the shadows, damn your love, damn your lies,” this is sung in harmony with people who are acrimonious and being used in a film about a boy coming of age in a friendship that like many marriages is more habitual than stable. He finds some sort of validation with a woman who is in a volatile relationship. His best friend has run off with her husband to surf in Bali. They both feel betrayed.
“And if, you don’t love me now, You will never love me again,I can still hear you saying,You would never break the chain (Never break the chain). There is a lot of surfing in the movie, but it is not a surfing movie. With music, the spaces between the notes is often what makes music, well, music. The film is a coming of age film that deals with sexuality of adolescence and the blurred lines of what happens when a teenager has an adult’s body but is still not a fully formed grown-ass adult but Breath like the act of taking in oxygen into our bodies is so much more. My guess is that you are about halfway through the song. Just close your eyes and really listen to it, all of it. Baker knows what he’s doing.
Thanks for the review. I always thought it was really about Piklett as he is the one in the book that is mostly mentioned I have not seen the film yet but I cannot wait mostly because Simon is in it.
Actor Simon Baker was 7 or 8 years old the first time he saw surfing on television, and thought, “I want to do that.”
The Bakers lived in Sydney, far from any beach, but soon moved to the coast. His parents told young Simon that he could start surfing at 15, but by 10, he was stashing a board at a mate’s house. He would leave the house at dawn, telling his mom and dad that he was off to play cricket. When he got home late in the afternoon, he would frantically hide the bits of sand that he inevitably tracked into the house. By the time his parents caught on to what he was doing, he was entering surf competitions.
It was far too late to order their son to stop doing what he loved.
It is little wonder then that Baker chose Aussie Tim Winton’s 2008 coming-of-age novel “Breath” as his feature directing debut, even co-writing the screenplay with Gerard Lee. The book relates the tale of 13-year-old Pikelet and 14-year-old Loonie, tyro surfers who come under the tutelage of former pro surfer Sando, who leads them into ever deeper, ever more dangerous waters.
“The book is probably the best literary depiction of being in the ocean and having a relationship with the ocean as a surfer that I’ve ever read,” says Baker in conversation at the Toronto International Film Festival, where “Breath” had its world premiere.
Baker plays Sando, casting newcomers Samson Coulter as Pikelet and Ben Spence as Loonie — teenagers who had never acted before, but who began surfing before they were in grade school. Finding the boys was one of Baker’s biggest challenges. Whoever won the roles had to be able to act and surf. He concentrated on finding surfers with potential. He put out a casting call on social media, inviting youths to record themselves surfing and performing a short scene (which filmmakers provided).
With casting director Nikki Barrett vetting the submissions, Baker looked at 250 kids from all around Australia, eventually inviting six to a weekend workshop, from which Coulter and Spence emerged.
“People say, ‘What were you thinking, casting no-actors? That must have been a nightmare,’” Baker says. “It really wasn’t. The learning curve at that age is tremendous if you have the right attitude and you’re willing and not afraid. These guys had that in spades.
“With this story, if you think about the character of Sando and him being a sort of mentor figure for these two young guys, he takes them into this new world. Pretty much, (I’m doing) that as a director, casting these two young guys who had never acted before. It was paralleling life, in a way." Baker began developing the script for “Breath" in 2010, in the early seasons of his hit CBS TV show “The Mentalist.” The actor relocated to Los Angeles in the late 1990s, finding early fortune with his first film, a small role in “L.A. Confidential.” (He laughs, recalling that he thought he had it made, only to see his next three films not be released.) But after starring in three American series (“The Guardian” and “Smith” were the others) and appearing in such films as “The Devil Wears Prada,” “The Killer Inside Me” and “Margin Call,” he was ready to go home. He boarded a plane for Sydney the day “The Mentalist” wrapped in 2015. He opened his production office for “Breath” the next day.
“People have asked for years what I miss most about Australia,” Baker says. “What I’ve always missed is the environment, all those physical elements that are in this film. Those were the things I really craved when I lived in California. California has its own beauty, but the sights and the smells and the tastes of the air on the coast of Australia is in my DNA.”
That was something Baker sought to capture in “Breath,” along with a realistic experience of surfing. At 48, he’s been surfing for nearly four decades. He recalls the 1991 thriller “Point Break,” and the last scene where Patrick Swayze goes out one last time to meet a monster wave on Australia’s wild coast — only the audience doesn’t see him catch that wave.
“You’ve got to see the character go from the land into the water and be able to be with him in an intimate way in those moments," Baker says, “and then be able to go wide and see the treachery of the environment. I wanted it to feel like a real experience.”
Breath (not rated) opens Friday, June 29, at Bay Area theaters. Pam Grady is a Bay Area freelance writer
This movie will resonate with a lot of humans all over the world, I hope! The ocean was it's own-and by far, the most exciting character in the movie! Completely mesmerizing. I hope you all will be able to see it on a big screen.
