THE DEEPEST BREATH - Mark Reviews Movies

The Deepest Breath, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 18, 2023

There is so much to admire about The Deepest Breath, which presents a dual biography of two freedivers as each one's life moves, seemingly by fate, closer and closer to the other. Director Laura McGann's documentary, though, is also a sort of eulogy, because it becomes clear that, among the many faces we see and voices we hear over the course of this narrative, something vital is missing. The absence is palpable, and much of the movie's emotional impact comes, not from who is in front of the camera and who is speaking to us, but from who doesn't appear and words that clearly come from the past.

That makes a major revelation in McGann's documentary such a clearly misguided and manipulative move—enough so that everything before it feels like an intentional act of cheating. There's simply no emotionally sound or narratively logical excuse for the decision. It makes what had been a strong depiction of the power of apparent destiny and the tragedy of following a passion beyond one's limitations into a movie that finally disrespects the audience and does a disservice to its subjects.

It almost feels dishonest, then, for this review to follow the path of McGann's story, because so much of it turns out to be precisely framed and staged in a deliberate act of misdirection. A piece of criticism should reflect what a movie does as much as possible, though, even if what it's actually doing is almost completely counter to the pretense it's presenting. Some who read this, after all, won't have seen the movie before doing so, but if you have watched it, yes, that epilogue is as frustrating as it feels for a variety of reasons that, hopefully, this piece will communicate in some indirect ways.

The central subjects are Alessia Zecchini, an Italian freediver with a dream to become the best in the world, and Stephen Keenan, a man who goes from a quaint life in Ireland to become a world traveler and also a diver. At any given point in their respective biographies, there is probably no rational reason that their paths should cross, considering that they come from different countries, their interests don't converge for a long stretch of time, and, even after separately finding their way to the sport, their goals in diving aren't the same.

Freediving, by the way, is exactly what it sounds like. In it, a participant dives as deep as their body allows, without the aid of any artificial breathing apparatus, and returns to the surface. One thing McGann's movie does without any factual fault is explain and show the obvious physicality, mental toughness, and skill required to succeed at the sport, as well as the clear and less-apparent perils involved in participating in it.

Of primary focus here is the return trip from the depths, as a diver's body has exhausted its oxygen, must battle the pull that helped the descent, and possibly find their brain shutting down just before reaching the surface. Those blackouts, the body's evolutionary defense mechanism against such strain, could easily be fatal in the water and without proper medical assistance. Seeing limp divers, their eyes wide open but without any signs of consciousness, being helped under these conditions, as happens a few times in the movie, is a frightening sight.

Such knowledge makes scenes of Zecchini and Keenan diving, in different parts of the world and with no or little knowledge of each other for most of their lives, compelling and terrifying. In addition to interviews with colleagues and friends and family members, the movie is assembled from home movies, archival footage, and some effective re-creations when necessary, but for the most part, it charts the lives of its main subjects.

Zecchini's story as a professional diver, seeking out the world record, is provided by a lot of footage from training and competitions, as well as recorded interviews with her and an interview the filmmakers conducted with her father. He is surrounded by photos of her and rows of her trophies and medals, and McGann obviously wants us to piece together the notion that those should be with Zecchini, not her father. The father also speaks of his daughter's life and career in the past tense, and just as with Keenan, Zecchini is absent from this recounting of her life's story.

As for Keenan, his life is less a matter of any public record, since his aspirations in freediving are shown to be less ambitious than Zecchini's. In his biography, he decides to go to the places he adored from watching nature television programs and reading magazines, only to find himself in a coastal town in Egypt where freedivers frequent. He takes up the sport but, after experiencing a blackout, devotes his life to helping fellow divers at their most vulnerable.

There's an undeniable air of melancholy as the movie intercuts between these two stories, as those who are close to Zecchini and/or Keenan continue to speak about various events as they happened in the moment. It's all building toward a tragedy (In retrospect, the movie seems to tease us with multiple possibilities for when and where it will happen), and it's only at the last possible moment that The Deepest Breath reveals it, as well as the extent to which it has misled us for no perceivable reason except to toy with our emotions.

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