Breath (2017)

Purely Joyful Movie!

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Award-winning novels do not always lead to award-winning films. As we know, the novel's unbounded imaginative space reigns free while the movie is constrained within sight and sound. The coming-of-age film Breath (2017)is beautiful to look at, but its clichéd characters and banal dialogue make it a rather ordinary translation of Tim Winton's widely acclaimed book.The story is framed as a middle-age nostalgic flashback to growing up in a logging village on the spectacular West Australian coastline. We follow through the eyes of a young teenager called Pikelet (Samson Coulter) who, with his aptly-named best friend Loonie (Ben Spence), are inducted into the surfing culture of the 1970s. Their dreams of conquering big waves are made real when they are befriended by a 40-something former top surfer and off-the-grid hippy called Sando (Simon Baker). He becomes their mentor, inspiring them with zen-like dogma about the mastery of one's inner fears and the purism of doing something as pointlessly elegant as riding a dangerously large wave. Meanwhile, Sando's surly girlfriend Eva (Elizabeth Debicki) limps around in the background with a chronic injury from top-tier competitive skiing. She is cool towards the teenagers until Sando and Loonie take off to Indonesia to chase even bigger waves, leaving young Pikelet to herself.Sexual initiation is not always recalled through misty lens. Eva has dangerously weird taste in bed and no qualms about the boy's lack of maturity. While the camera spends a lot of time watching them together it is never close enough to earn an 18+ rating. Pikelet finds himself between two worlds: innocent school friends on one hand, and a worldly woman who uses him as a toy on the other. It is not so different to the space between mastering a wave for fun and chasing one to prove you are not scared.The enduring high point of Breath is its cinematography. Lush rainforests, ruggedly rocky coastlines, and white-crested rollers are captured with almost lyrical beauty. The cameras spend a lot of time on top of and under the water, and some of the wave shots can make you gasp. However,the characters are one-dimensional, the dialogue often inauthentically mystical, and there is not a trace of narrative tension. Eva remains a shadowy person and her past sporting career is barely mentioned. Women's achievements don't count for much in a man's world, but the film labours at length but simplistically over what it takes to be a man. A particularly insipid example is early in the film the two teenagers get around on under-sized kid's BMX bicycles, but the day after Pikelet's sexual initiation he suddenly appears on a full-size bike. Really; is that all it takes?If Breathhas serious messages about growing up with worthwhile values, they only hang in limbo, unformed and unexplored. No doubt there will be different responses from those who read the book, those who fondly remember the 1970s, and those for whom sex and surfing is still a pathway to adulthood. If it achieves anything, it highlights how much more complex growing up is today.

I read the book 10 years ago. I've read most of Tim Winton's work and I must confess to always ending up a little disappointed because I'm always looking for another "Cloudstreet"; a work of genius I've read three times. (the three-part TV mini-series is worth a look as well). But back to "Breath". The book opens with an horrific scene which gives meaning to the title. The movie does not. After the opening scene in the book the story presses on with purpose. The movie does not. And nothing in the movie really does give meaning to the title. I found it kind of directionless and ultimately unsatisfying. Tim Winton was involved with the screen play - I think he wasn't paying attention. The surfing scenes were well done but nothing you can't see on YouTube. I was really looking forward to seeing this movie, but I can't give it a high score. 4 out of 10. Wait for the DVD.

I read each new Tim Winton book as they come out. He's one of Australia's best writers and his work is certainly the most authentic Australiana. So, even though I've admired Simon Baker's work for many years, I worried that the film would be hard-pressed to match the quality of the written story. The anxiety was wasted; Breath the movie is a superb rendering of the book, managing to capture the moods, emotions, fears love and the allure of surfing in an understated and intimate way, even while omitting sections of the book, which was a complex 215 pages, and redirecting the thrust of the novel. At almost two hours, it's paced in a tempo that matches the period, the people and the lifestyle and flows past like the beautiful waves at Barney's. The young actors are brilliant but congratulations to all concerned because so is the film.

I hadn't/haven't read the book. My ideas about the themes and the story come entirely from seeing this film. It was about boys/young men and the influences and pressures on them when they are attaining "manhood" and what that involves, learning to say "no" to outside pressures and to stand on your own two feet and to decide what is right for you. The 2 leads were not actors, but their performances are terrific. Very natural and believable. "Loony" delivered some funny lines perfectly and conveyed behaviours consistent with his nickname with reckless abandon, but there were reasons in his life that drove his behaviour. Neither his lines nor his conduct were really funny when you thought about it afterwards (and I did think about the themes afterwards which, to me, highlights that a movie was good) The other boy "Pikelet" was a more cautious, thoughtful type and launching himself onto waves wasn't something that came naturally to him, he had to overcome his fears to give it a go. The character showed by his face the conflict of wanting to conform against his natural personality, quite an achievement for an actor, but for a non-actor even more so. The performances by the 2 young leads no doubt is attributable to Simon Baker's direction and he did a great job showing what was "going on" with the characters under the surface.Both boys meet Sando, Simon Baker's character and he teaches them about surfing and taking risks on the water, how waves behave and that sort of thing. By their interactions with Sando and his American wife, who is depressed and frustrated after an injury, the boys also learn more about life and people. The story spans several years as the boys "grow up". I'm not into surfing, but the surfing scenes were "just right" not a second too long or boring to me as a non-surfer, visually stunning and interesting to watch and advancing the story. This isn't "light-hearted" entertainment, but if you want to see a beautifully shot story about people and what "makes them tick" and the influences on young boys/men, go to see it.