All That Breathes (2022)

Not rated on IMDb, but HBO labeled it TV-14.  I'm going to go with TV-14, even though I don't really know why.  If you are really bothered by injured animals (not in gross ways, mind you.  Just being treated by doctors), then I could see how this might be traumatic.  There's a lot of trash and squalor contrasted to living, breathing animals.  I think there might be some mild language, but I don't remember anything that would be considered a red flag. 

DIRECTOR: Shaunak Sen

Dear Tim,

Please don't make me write about this.  I know that you write about every movie you watch and it's a thing.  I know that this is a movie that is up for the Academy Awards.  But I have been writing a lot lately and it feels like the barrel is pretty dry right now.  Also, this movie.  This movie is especially bad.  Sure, lots of critics won't shut up about how it is great.  One review even said that "Every shot is pure gold" or some nonsense like that.  But this was potentially the most boring movie you watched all year and it's a waste of both our times (despite the fact that you are one person) to write about this movie.  

Sincerely,
Yada yada yada

Okay, that was dramatic, but well-deserved.  I give my wife a lot of nonsense.  She's a wonderful lady and I love that she watches movies with me.  I tend to watch documentaries without her because I know that she tends to need a little bit more fun with her movies.  I just put her through Fire of Love, which was a burden on her but at least it was a little fun.  But All That Breathes is devoid of all fun.  Now, that's not to say that movies need to be fun.  If I've learned anything about the 2023 Oscar noms is that fun is few and far between on these movies, shy of Everything Everywhere All at Once.  I would even love a movie that was depressing, but moved me.  Man, this movie is depressing.  But it does not move me.  Now, as much as I'm going to rip this movie apart, a lot of this falls on me.  I am not the audience for this movie.  I've written that a lot over the last six years.  (Has it been six years of writing these?)  But I have never been an animal person.  I don't dislike animals and I don't want these kites to die.  But I also am not moved in the same way that a die hard pet person would be about these birds.

Birds, as my wife will constantly remind our family, are gross.  In this case, their grossness is actually good for the environment.  Kites are trash eaters.  They apparently eat apparently a ton of trash a year.   That's a lot of garbage.  Considering the world is quickly falling apart, I can see the value of having kites around for the further existence of humankind.  It doesn't make it less gross thinking about it.  But there are two guys and one thing that the movie doesn't quite make clear is the qualifications that these two guys have.  Part of that comes from the almost cinema verite style of documentary.  We don't have a narrator.  We don't have text giving us background on these two dudes and their kite obsession.  Everything that we get from the movie must be gleaned from what actually happens.  That means we know that they make soap dispensers.  We know that they don't work in a hospital.  The fact that these birds are brought in cardboard boxes makes it seem like --and I apologize for the judgment call that I'm making --kind of like animal hoarders, but more altruistic.

The only real information that we get is that these guys have been on American news for all of the work that they do.  Don't get me wrong.  If USA Today or whatever decided to do an emotional piece on the work I do outside of my regular job, I would show that as qualifications immediately.  After all, I have a picture of me and Stan Lee next to all of my certifications in my classroom as a form of merit.  But the big difference is that I have that next to my actual certifications.  I'm at one of those writing impasses where something is going to get sacrificed for the other point to be made.  Be aware that I have other thoughts on this.  But the fact that they don't have certifications should be explored in this movie. Honestly, the content of this movie is that of a short documentary.  (Note: if I've already pointed this out, realize that five days have passed since I started writing this until where I am today).  I can imagine a deep frustration by these guys who want to help out every bird that they meet.  They're constantly busting their heads against the wall, fighting for resources and time, not to even consider cleanliness.  Is the thing that's stopping them the knowledge that time spent at veterinary school would allow countless birds to die?

Listen, for as progressive as I've gotten over the past decade, I'm still a guy who hates Upworthy videos. (That being said, I just watched a short of a little girl with cerebral palsy meeting Captain America and that got me).  It just seems like this movie is lauding an inefficient system that makes no sense to me.  I mean, I can't fault the message of the movie: Do anything you can. But this is one of those stories that's more depressing than hopeful.  The good news I can take away is that there are good people out there. The bad news is that they aren't at all doing this in a way that will make any real difference, considering that they have the motivation to make real change.  That's really easy for me to say as I type, type, type away a blog for a movie that I'll most likely forget.  (Oh yeah, I'm not going to remember this movie two-three years from now. ) Why don't we have the story of med school?  Why is this movie so focused just on these two guys?  There is so much more to this story that is so important to the narrative.  But by focusing on these two guys, all I get is frustrated.  And then the movie will just cut to animals in trash.

The animals in trash thing is pretty damning to me, by the way.  I have a really romantic view of the dirt in India.  I really apologize for writing in large generalizations and I'm going to be accidentally rude in what I write.  But I don't understand the living conditions in India.  Everything is based on movies, so I apologize.  It just seems like Indian culture is very cool with offensive amounts of waste.  Part of that comes from population density and I have to understand that.  But All That Breathes starts with an ungodly amount of rats scurrying around trash as the camera sweeps low across the ground. It just establishes so much about the sanitary conditions of the country.  Now, my natural reaction to that is "Thank God I live in America, where pollution is not a problem."  I don't think that's what the filmmakers want me to think.  The message of the story is meant to be a global issue, talking about how industrialization and pollution is a problem that's affecting us all. But when I see these kinds of shots, it just makes me think of how much better we are and I hate myself for that.  That's the worst feeling.  It's the same thing that happens iwth White Savior movies.  I see someone who is shockingly racist and I let myself off the hook for what racism I have festering inside of me.

I really have to drive this point home and I'm sorry that I'm the worst for it.  All That Breathes is mostly criminal because it's boring.  I began to hate the kites by the end of the movie.  There's a narrative within the film.  The growth of the hospital on the roof of their apartment building is the story of the film.  That's the story that the filmmakers found and built around.  It was frustrating and that's fine.  But really, nothing about the film's message really evolved past that initial carrying in of kites in cardboard boxes.  They spend all of their time taking care of kites and there are more and more every day.  It's such a short story that I did anything to keep focused on it and I must say that I failed.  I tend to throw my phone out of reach to force myself to pay attention to movies.  At one point, I stood up and got it.  It has to be an animal-lover issue, right?  Honestly, this movie just kept going and going and I learned nothing new about kites that I didn't learn in the first few minutes.  It was brutal.  My wife is right.  Some documentaries are just boring.  This movie pushed me to my limits.