Breathe In Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

Breathe In Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 12, 2014

Though it might not seem intuitively obvious, you can tell a lot about a professional musician by the instrument he or she plays. The string family is a salient case in point. Speaking in overly broad generalities, first violinists tend to be the showmen (or women) of the group, sawing madly away on their instruments in a musical analog to a soccer player reacting to a supposedly life threatening injury (which was probably no more than a tap). Second violinists and violists tend to be the angry jealous types, envious that those darned first violinists get all the attention (and usually the best lines of music). Contrabass players are typically strong and steady, if occasionally a bit unimaginative. But cello players? Cellists are often the most passionate yet intellectual members of string playing consortiums. Something about the slightly mournful timbre of the instrument seems to draw those prone to introspection, but the demanding technical requirements of the instrument also tend to attract those with overweening intellects. Both of those elements are firmly on display in Breathe In, a quiet, rather unassuming film about a cellist named Keith Reynolds (Guy Pearce), whose perfectly ordered (if also perfectly predictable) life begins to unravel when an exchange student comes to stay with his family. This intimate observational effort by Drake Doremus (Like Crazy) doesn’t traffic in much emotional hyperbole, preferring instead to chart the course of an unlikely romance in small, at times wordless, moments. Doremus gets almost uncomfortably close to these characters, both figuratively in terms of the emotions being displayed but also physically in terms of where the camera is placed. How tolerant individual viewers are in invading the personal spaces of four characters thrown into a bit of turmoil may determine how much “enjoyment” (if that’s even the right word) can be gleaned from this film, but there’s little doubt that Doremus manages to create a palpable mood out of fairly rote and perhaps even unpromising elements.

Like many gifted musicians, Keith has come to the realization that being gifted doesn’t pay the bills, and so he has given in to the requirements of being a husband, father and breadwinner by teaching music at a local school. His dream is to take his cello playing to professional heights, and in fact when he does get the chance to play in public, it’s one of the few times he feels fully alive. Although he has a relatively functional home life with his wife Megan (Amy Ryan) and high school aged daughter Lauren (Mackenzie Davis), it’s evident that there are some issues percolating below a seemingly placid surface.

Following somewhat the same setup as Doremus explored in Like Crazy, Felicity Jones appears as a British exchange student named Sophie matriculating to the United States, taking up residence in the Reynolds home. Sophie seems almost genetically in tune with Keith’s laconic, tamped down demeanor, and it soon becomes evident that the two share a common bond—music. Sophie is an incredibly accomplished pianist, though she seems reticent to really share her talent in public. Sophie does share her intuition about Keith’s unhappy interior life, and the two quite naturally begin to form a bond that soon begins to develop into something potentially more dangerous.

The plot here—such as it is—is actually secondary to simply providing room for a quartet of very able actors to create memorable characterizations. The term “create” is perhaps more a propos than usual, for Doremus does not write traditional screenplays. Instead of crafting dialogue which actors recite, Doremus instead fashions outlines (more or less) which provide the broad strokes of where he wants individual scenes to go, and then he simply turns his actors loose, letting them find the right words and other behaviors to inform their characters. This gives a deliberately small scale, intimate feeling to his films, but it can also tend to present a certain overly precious quality at times, as well.

Doremus gets a lot right here, nonetheless, though he tends to shunt the Ryan and Davis characters into more one note territory than he does with either Pearce or Jones. Despite the fact that Keith’s wife and daughter obviously play a huge part in the story, especially once the relationship between Keith and Sophie begins to blossom, this is in many ways a “two hander”, focusing mostly on the older would be cellist and the young exchange student. Both Pearce and Jones are uncommonly affecting and effective here, especially since at least some of their most potent interchanges are virtually wordless.

One thing that Breathe In manages more than capably is an almost complete lack of overt melodrama. While Megan especially seems prone to explode at various times, Doremus tends to prefer a more cautious, circuitous route to catharsis. The suggestion here is that despite missteps, even outright mistakes, salvation (or at least a hint of grace) is actually possible for those who feel trapped or underappreciated. That in turn might even be enough to temporarily make the cello sound triumphant.

For somewhat differing assessments of Breathe In, I refer you to the reviews by my colleagues Dr. Svet Atanasov and Brian Orndorf:

Breathe In Blu-ray review

Breathe In

Breathe In Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Breathe In is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cohen Media Group with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Despite being in just a slightly different aspect ratio, this appears virtually identical with the British release reviewed by my colleague Dr. Svet Atanasov, at least in terms of overall color space and sharpness. Filmed with the Arri Alexa Plus, Breathe In has the typically sharp and extremely well defined appearance this system almost always offers. Doremus and DP John Guleserian get almost impossibly close to the characters at times, and therefore fine detail can be quite impressive (see screenshot 4 for a good example). Doremus also likes handheld "jiggly cam" work, and that adds at least the perception of softness to some scenes. I found the palette here curiously tamped down at times, but that was probably an intentional decision to reflect the unfulfilled emotional worlds of the characters. Despite a kind of pallid ambience, there is a nice range of tones on display here which look nice, if not overly vivid, throughout the presentation. There are no image instability issues, and also no artifacts of any note to cause worry.

Breathe In Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Breathe In's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 is a nuanced affair, but the beautiful rendering of composer Dustin O'Halloran's incredibly evocative score shows off the surround channels quite nicely, albeit subtly at times. The rest of the film is really rather small scale in sound design, offering dialogue and fairly run of the mill ambient environmental effects with clarity and precision. The track has decent if not overwhelming dynamic range, and fidelity is excellent, with no issues of any kind to report.

Breathe In Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Making of Breathe In (1080p; 9:35) has some interesting informational on the improvisatory manner in which this film was shot.


• Exclusive Interview with Director Drake Doremus (1080p; 3:47) features an interview with Doremus conducted by Alison Bailes.


• Trailer (1080p; 1:56)

Breathe In Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The May-December angle of Breathe In may lead some to feel this is merely a rehash of films like Kubrick's Lolita, but a simple cursory glance at the different emotional ambiences of these properties will easily disprove such an assumption. While there's something a bit questionable about Keith's desire for Sophie, the film tends to focus more on the emotional realities of the characters, all of whom feel trapped in various ways, rather than the physical allure between them. That gives Breathe In the breathing room it needs to develop a compelling story that's free from any overly salacious content. Doremus might have succeeded a bit more had he offered more than "talking points" to his actors, but the fact that all four of the featured performers are so effective is testament to the fact that there was a lot of creative impetus behind this feature, obviously not just from Doremus himself. While the story here is somewhat trite and predictable, the performances are what make Breathe In such a remarkable achievement. Technical merits here are similarly outstanding, and Breathe In comes Recommended.