We’re dwelling in a gilded age of journey filmmaking, and because of gizmos like flying drones and undersea cameras, sofa potatoes like myself can view essentially the most heart-stopping moments in outside sports activities in gleaming high-definition. In recent times I’ve watched mountaineers trudge under the skyscraper-sized ice serac on K2, surfers shred 80-foot swells off the Portuguese coast, and kayakers bob down Tibet’s raging Yarlung Tsangpo river like twigs in a brook. From the protection of my couch, I’ve usually gazed at these harmful moments caught on movie and thought: boy, I’d love to have the ability to try this!
I had no such response whereas watching the newest movie to enter the journey oeuvre: Netflix’s new documentary The Deepest Breath, which is now streaming. The movie takes viewers inside the damaging world of aggressive freediving, the place divers descend to the darkish depths of the open ocean whereas holding their breath after which trying to swim to the floor.
The Deepest Breath reveals in gut-wrenching element what occurs when issues go horribly unsuitable. Underwater cameras present divers swimming upwards, solely to black out from oxygen deprivation earlier than reaching the floor. These moments set off a frantic response from life-saving personnel: security divers seize the stricken athlete’s neck, seal off their nasal passages, yank them out of the water, after which start performing CPR. The athlete, in the meantime, is limp and lifeless, with bugged-out eyes and blue lips. After a number of moments, they jolt awake and start coughing.
Scenes like this play out many times in The Deepest Breath. The message is evident: near-death blackouts are as widespread in freediving as sprained ankles are in marathoning.
I’ll be sincere: these video clips now gasoline my nightmares. After watching The Deepest Breath, I can say with none hesitation that I’d sooner try K2 in a pair of Tevas or paddle out at Nazaré on a boogie board than ever strive my hand at freediving. Whereas the movie will not be a shining endorsement of the game, it’s nonetheless a really compelling watch. I might suggest it to anybody who can abdomen repeated scenes of individuals showing to drown earlier than being resuscitated.
Spoilers forward! There’s a love story and tragedy on the coronary heart of The Deepest Breath, one which Exterior reported on in 2017. The movie chronicles the lives of widespread divers Stephen Keenan of Eire and Alessia Zecchini of Italy—the latter is a freediving prodigy, world champion, and world record-holder (she dove to 358 ft on March 27, 2023). By age 14, Zecchini was already toppling breath-holding information within the swimming pool, and by 18 she had grow to be freediving’s undisputed up-and-coming star. Keenan, in the meantime, found the game after spending his twenties as a rudderless globetrotter. After turning into a SCUBA teacher within the freediving hotbed of Dahab, Egypt, Keenan blossomed into a security diver on the game’s worldwide circuit.
Irish filmmaker Laura McGann weaves their respective narratives along with detailed archival footage from the early components of their lives. Alongside the way in which, McGann pulls the curtain again on the game and its aggressive nuances. Freedivers propel themselves downward for the primary 90 ft or so earlier than the ocean takes over and sucks them into the darkish depths at excessive pace. After reaching a platform set at a prescribed depth, a diver snatches a token from the platform and begins swimming towards the floor. As soon as they emerge, a staff of judges examines the diver’s well being to find out if the try is nice. A blacked-out diver is disqualified.
Kudos to McGann and her fancy, high-definition waterproof cameras for capturing freediving’s eerily lovely area of play. From 50 ft under, the floor seems emerald, the depths purple. The digicam makes a free dive look each exhilarating and claustrophobic—like flying blind via a moonless sky.
High rivals play thoughts video games with each other—they solely announce the depth of their forthcoming dive shortly earlier than the descent to maintain rivals from scheduling deeper makes an attempt. The game is a continuing recreation of one-upmanship. Divers are consistently attempting to push the boundaries of their our bodies to see who can go deeper. On this fanatical push to push the boundaries, athletes usually discover their bodily boundaries in tragic methods.
You see, these repeated submersions have a grim influence on the human physique. Throughout a freedive, the ocean’s strain squeezes a diver’s lungs right down to the scale of a lemon—repeated dives can crush and tear the organ aside, inflicting bleeding, irreparable injury, and even demise. That’s not the one hazard. Divers typically get pushed off beam by the present and grow to be disoriented. That is what doubtless killed the game’s most embellished feminine champion, Russian diver Natalia Molchanova, who vanished off the coast of Ibiza in 2015 at age 53.
The message on the coronary heart of The Deepest Breath appears to be {that a} freediver’s pursuit of the game is a one-way ticket to an early and watery grave. Tragedy is central to the the movie and its two central characters. After assembly on the freediving scene and starting a brief courtship, Zecchini travels to Dahab to coach with Keenan. She additionally desires to dive Dahab’s notorious Blue Gap, an undersea cavern that helps a submerged arch, that solely the very best divers can swim via with out operating out of air.
The filmmaker captures the fateful occasions of Zecchini’s try. She descends into the Blue Gap, finds the arch, and makes an attempt to swim via it, however then turns into disoriented and runs out of air. Keenan, in the meantime, swims right down to her, grabs her arms, and hauls her weakening physique upward. The trouble saves Zecchini’s life, nevertheless it prices Keenan his.
Keenan went lacking through the dive, and swimmers discovered his lifeless physique floating on the floor a short while later. The footage reveals his heroic effort.
I completely teared up through the movie’s conclusion, which options Zecchini on digicam retelling the tragedy. On this approach, The Deepest Breath is just like different glorious up to date tasks in journey filmmaking. The most effective footage captures emotion and coronary heart. And also you don’t want a flying drone or an costly waterproof digicam for that.
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