Breath. From Book to Big Screen

The original cover design

Ten years ago I read Tim Winton’s Breath. Last Sunday I went to the movies to see Breath brought to the big screen – Simon Baker’s debut as a feature film director. I was quietly worried. I’d enjoyed reading Winton’s coming-of-age story about two young surfers, Pikelet and Loonie, and my concern was that should the film fail to reflect the spirit of the story this would somehow taint my connection with the book. A connection linked to the days of my own youth when I used to swim in the Indian Ocean on Perth’s northern beaches.

Thankfully, I can report that in the last day or so I have been drawn back to the book to re-read some of the scenes brought so beautifully to life in film.

Winton was closely involved in the making of the film, he co-wrote the screenplay with Baker and veteran screenwriter, Gerard Lee. Winton even provided some narration which gave some authenticity to the adult voice of the protagonist, Pikelet, whose reminiscence about the events of his youth forms the basis of the story.

Here’s Pikelet talking about the first time he saw men surfing:

‘How strange it was to see men do something beautiful. Something pointless and elegant, as though nobody saw or cared. In Sawyer, a town of millers and loggers and dairy famers, with one butcher and a rep from the rural bank beside the BP, men did solid, practical things, mostly with their hands.’

Breath, Tim Winton

I found an old interview with Tim Winton from 2008, when the book was first released:

‘Writing a book is a bit like surfing,’ he said. ‘Most of the time you’re waiting. And it’s quite pleasant, sitting in the water waiting. But you are expecting that the result of a storm over the horizon, in another time zone, usually, days old, will radiate out in the form of waves. And eventually, when they show up, you turn around and ride that energy to the shore. It’s a lovely thing, feeling that momentum. If you’re lucky, it’s also about grace. As a writer, you roll up to the desk every day, and then you sit there, waiting, in the hope that something will come over the horizon. And then you turn around and ride it, in the form of a story.’

One small thing, the re-release of the book features a photograph of the cast from the movie on the cover – I guess the marketers figure this overt tie-in with the movie will maximise the merchandising efforts. For me, though, I’ve always loved the original cover with its beautiful underwater scene, the curtain of tiny bubbles beneath the rippling surface and the vivid blue that reminds me so much of the Indian Ocean.

Beethoven’s Silent Sonata

In the 1994 movie, Immortal Beloved, Gary Oldman plays Ludwig van Beethoven. The brilliant, arrogant and occasionally irascible musician is struggling with the onset of deafness, which he tries to mask. His condition grows steadily worse, however, until he is completely deaf. In this scene, Beethoven finds a way to ‘hear’ the music through the notes resonating in the body of the piano. The moment is, at once, immensely uplifting and tragic.

When Beethoven’s deafness is discovered he reacts with vitriolic anger, for it would be perilous in his role as composer should it be common knowledge he was deaf.

There is a scene later in the film when an ageing Beethoven enters a concert hall mid performance as Ode to Joy is being played. The auditorium is filled with the rousing emotion of the symphony. When the camera closes in on the face of Beethoven (Oldman) the sound suddenly cuts to silence – he hears not a note of his own composition. The silence in this scene and the anguish wrought on the composer’s face is painful to watch. As the performance ends, Beethoven sees the crowd’s enthusiastic standing ovation but is deaf to their clamorous applause.

Another immersive performance from Gary Oldman. In recent weeks I watched Darkest Hour and was mesmerised by Oldman’s role as Winston Churchill. The two films are separated by a 23-year time span – what unites them is the actor’s ability to find a way to inhabit a character so intimately that what happens on the screen exudes a palpable and irrefutable truth.

Immortal Beloved: 2017, Directed by Bernard Rose. Music by Ludwig van Beethoven and film music by George Fenton (no relation)- whose other film scores include: Gandhi, Dangerous Liaisons, White Mischief and The Madness of King George.

Getting Inside Cromwell’s Head

Hilary Mantel's Tudor world

I was talking to a good friend of mine who enjoys history and suggested he might like to read Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall – the first book in her fictional trilogy on Thomas Cromwell, doomed advisor to Henry VIII during the span of a particularly turbulent decade in Tudor England. My friend had no interest whatsoever in reading fiction, he practically spat the word, citing that he prefers to read actual history – the facts. Historical fiction seems to polarise opinion in this way.

Clearly, then, my friend won’t be anticipating as I am, the third instalment in the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, which was supposed to be released in August of 2018. I say supposed to be because Hilary Mantel has just announced that it is looking ‘increasingly unlikely’ that the book would be ready. ‘It simply depends when it comes in…you know, publishing goes in seasons. If I can get it in (finished) early in the new year, it might very well come out later in the summer. The book may not appear until 2019,’ said Mantel. Interesting that literature has to bow to the vagaries of the market, even though both Wolf Hall, 2009, and Bring Up the Bodies, 2012 made Mantel the first author to win the Man Booker Prize for consecutive books. Even though the BBC created a marvellous, and much lauded, six-part adaption for television called Wolf Hall starring the brilliant Mark Rylance as Cromwell. I’d recommend it to anyone, save my friend who’s a stickler for the absolute facts.

I’ve been fascinated by Mantel’s exploration of the inner thoughts and feelings of the Machiavellian Cromwell. The ruthless mind, the complex machinations, the corridor wranglings, the manipulations in court – it makes House of Cards seem tame by comparison. I look forward to the last instalment which charts his final years, the fall from grace and ultimately his execution by beheading.