All That Breathes, 2022.
Directed by Shaunak Sen.
SYNOPSIS:
Amid the darkening backdrop of Delhi’s apocalyptic air and escalating violence, two brothers devote their lives to protect one casualty of the turbulent times: the bird known as the black kite.
Low on words but high on immediate visual impact, Shaunak Sen’s (Cities of Sleep) new documentary All That Breathes shines a light on a most admirable mission undertaken by two brothers in Delhi; a mission which underlines the delicacy with which ecosystems are held together and how even those with scant resources can affect meaningful change.
In their youth, brothers Saud and Nadeem were taught that feeding black kites by tossing meat up to the birds of prey would earn a Muslim religious credit or “sawab.” But as the years have passed and the skies have become increasingly clouded with pollution, an alarming number of kites have begun falling to the ground. And so, without any formal training and learning anatomy from muscle fitness magazines of all things, Saud and Nadeem committed themselves to nursing the kites back to health.
Even in a city as positively chaotic as Delhi, the brothers remain impressively devoted to the notion that even a single kite matters, as evidenced by a treacherous swim they make across a river bank to retrieve a wounded kite being circled by crows.
Yet the nobility of their work comes with considerable sacrifices; they use their soap dispenser business to remain scarcely solvent, rely on donated or discounted meat from local traders to feed the kites, and operate out of a constantly-flooding basement “office.”
On top of this, there are constant rolling blackouts in the city, and the pair naturally have a limited bandwidth – both in terms of time and mental energy – that they must divide between their business, this thankless work, their families, and their wider desires. When frustration sets in and the siblings squabble, one aptly remarks that all the anguish is merely a symptom of what’s happening in the sky.
“Delhi is a gaping wound, and we’re a tiny Band Aid on it,” one of the pair says, nodding to the fact that the WHO rates Delhi’s air quality as the worst of any major city in the world. The smog is thick enough that the kites and most other animals in Delhi have had to adapt their behaviours, the kites pitching-up their voices to compensate for traffic and even using cigarette butts as parasite repellent.
This is without getting into the spectre of social conflict spilling out onto the streets, as religious riots targeting Muslims like themselves happen close by, and on a wider scale there’s the terrifying ongoing nuclear brinkmanship between India and Pakistan. Early on, the brothers ponder what would happen to the animals left behind in the wake of Delhi’s theoretical nuclear devastation.
Saud and Nadeem clearly bear an incredible weight of responsibility and existential anxiety, but this is met by the beaming joy of nursing a kite back to health, and also the triumph whenever they find new funding to help expand their modest animal hospital. There are crushing setbacks, and no two men can fix the wider societal, political issues at play, but they’ve also proven the means through which a grassroots effort can meaningfully move the needle.
Despite the fraught circumstances of its creation, Sen’s film is an impressive, often quite beautiful achievement. Favouring striking imagery over excess narration or dialogues, Sen’s glimpses of animal life enduring amid the human sprawl are alternately haunting and wonderful.
Sun-splashed visages of kites flooding the sky are framed with exceptional artistry, and one prolonged shot of a snail crawling along in front of a raging fire wouldn’t look remotely amiss in an actual narrative feature. The visuals are matched by some laudably crunchy, granular sound design, from rats scurrying and screeching to birds flapping around, married to a playfully airy musical score.
As both a touching testament to brotherhood and a multi-faceted look at the challenges facing modern India, All That Breathes is by turns poetic and unsettling. Shaunak Sen’s documentary is an intimate, visually creative tribute to two Indian brothers who have nobly taken it upon themselves to become nature’s embattled caretakers in Delhi.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more film rambling.
