This British drama about a man who refused
to become a passive polio victim is a four-Kleenex weepie of note. (Review by
Patrick Compton – 8/10)
Andrew Garfield and the luminous Claire Foy
are marvellous in this touching movie – based on fact –about a man and his wife
who changed the attitude of the medical profession to the severely disabled.
The excellent screenplay by William
Nicholson effectively recreates Robin Cavendish’s early 1960s campaign for more
enlightened treatment of polio sufferers and for the better social integration
of the severely disabled. Although the disease hardly exists now, the film’s
attitude towards the disabled is as relevant today as it was then.
The movie represents the directorial debut
of Andy Serkis who is best known for his motion-capture performances as Gollum
in Lord Of The Rings and Caesar in Planet Of The Apes. Although he
occasionally overcooks the sentiment, Serkis generally makes an excellent job
of it with plenty of English stiff upper lip and humour as his upper-middle
class couple and their supporters – complete with cut-glass accents – wage a
merry war against the disease.
Cavendish first meets his wife-to-be,
Diana, during a cricket match on a village green, launching a straight drive
into her tea service. It’s an appropriate image for the privileged, fun-filled
life they ought to have led. Instead, after taking his by-now pregnant wife out
to Kenya to start his new job as a tea-salesman, he contracts polio and their
dreams of happiness appear to have been shattered.
At the time, polio sufferers, who were
literally unable to move or even breathe without respirators, were kept
incarcerated in hospital for the remainder of their lives, hidden from the
world. Cavendish, after going through an extended bout of depression, becomes
determined to escape this suffocating fate, even if it costs him his life.
Fortunately he has his own fortitude and
wonderful support to help him. There's the indefatigable Diana, a cheerful
inventor friend (Hugh Bonneville) who comes up with a respirator-equipped
wheelchair, and wonderful backing from family and friends – including Tom
Hollander who plays both Diana’s lovably eccentric twin brothers.
The film celebrates the way Cavendish
chooses to live, giving the finger to what seems to be his miserable fate and
raising a glass of claret to an alternative life. Along the way, the stiff
English medical and social services establishment comes in for a pummelling,
and there is one particularly disturbing sequence in a German medical facility
where patients are kept like animals in an experimental institute.
Breathe is about love and loyalty, family and friendship in the face of
dreadful odds. And yes, it is both enjoyable and inspirational and moving. Take
tissues.
Breathe is showing at Gateway Mall. – Patrick Compton
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