Breathe

It’s poet­ic that some­one like the great Andy Serkis would make such a sen­si­tive and unsen­ti­men­tal film about human paral­y­sis, con­sid­er­ing that much of his pro­fes­sion­al career has been dri­ven by under­stand­ing the impulse behind how and why peo­ple (and ani­mals) move their bod­ies. In the 2010 film Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll he played avun­cu­lar punk idol Ian Dury, a fig­ure who was par­tial­ly dis­abled by polio but who rebel­lious­ly cul­ti­vat­ed career and fam­i­ly regard­less. With Breathe he shifts behind the cam­era, but his expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge of the virus and its effects are pal­pa­ble. Heart­break­ing, even.

This dole­ful, three-han­kie weepie tells of one Robin Cavendish, chip­per tea trad­er and full-bore posh knob who, at the end of the 1950s, con­tracts polio while in Africa and is left paral­ysed from the neck down. His life hangs by the thread of an omnipresent res­pi­ra­tor whose com­fort­ing oscil­la­tions become the con­stant sound­track to his con­tin­ued exis­tence. At first he wants to die because soci­ety, tech­nol­o­gy and cap­i­tal­ism have no place for those in his con­di­tion. He is wracked with tor­ment and sees no future for him­self. His dot­ing wife Diana sees oth­er­wise, and ded­i­cates her days to extend­ing and improv­ing Robin’s appar­ent­ly hope­less situation.

Yes, it doesn’t read like much more than a con­ven­tion­al dis­ease-of-the-week movie where an irre­press­ible will to sur­vive (plus an in nite stock of human empa­thy) lays low the mis­for­tunes of a crush­ing ail­ment. And Serkis accepts this for­mu­la, to a degree. Yet Breathe suc­cumbs to few of the mawk­ish pit­falls of this dubi­ous sub-genre, main­ly down to the fact that every­thing on screen feels pre­cise­ly judged and care­ful­ly weight­ed. Andrew Garfield offers fur­ther evi­dence that he may be the UK’s great­est young actor, chan­nelling Robin’s mor­bid­ly wry out­look with­out ever tip­ping over into cod insin­cer­i­ty and arrogance.

Claire Foy, mean­while, delvers an extra­or­di­nary, pierc­ing­ly sub­tle turn as unflap­pable spouse Diana. She embod­ies this paragon of humane com­pas­sion down to the last fol­li­cle, nev­er mak­ing it feel too obvi­ous that her eter­nal pluck is a mere smoke­screen for more doom-laden feel­ings. The dark­ness and light exist with­in her simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, and they are vis­i­ble when­ev­er she is in the frame. It’s a remark­able feat of sub­tle, can­did expression.

But it’s not just the per­for­mances keep­ing this ship afloat. As a debut direc­tor, Serkis presents him­self as a film­mak­er who search­es for the one thing that mat­ters in every scene. He main­tains an aware­ness of every­one and every­thing in a room or loca­tion, gen­er­at­ing an atmos­phere that’s lived-in rather than cold and arti­fi­cial. And it’s not just a pro­ces­sion of long­ing glances and warm ban­ter: one bril­liant­ly han­dled, clock-tick­ing sus­pense sequence sees the fam­i­ly dog nudge the res­pi­ra­tor plug out of the wall while Diana tends to their tod­dler, Jonathan.

It does lose some steam when it moves away from the inti­mate hus­band-wife dynam­ic to fill out more mun­dane (albeit impor­tant) bio­graph­i­cal mat­ters. And the score by Nitin Sawh­ney is sev­en flavours of gloopy syrup. Oth­er­wise, this is a well-oiled and fine­ly-cal­i­brat­ed machine. Hold on to your flat-caps come award season.