Tropic Sprockets / The Deepest Breath
By Ian Brockway
The sea is a gorgeous environment, but it is also awesome and terrifying. One sees this almost immediately in watching a new documentary “The Deepest Breath “by director Laura McGann. [Showtimes and trailer at TropicCinema.com.]
This film is visually stunning. In its demonstration of writer Edmund Burke’s definition of the Sublime, the ultimate power of Nature, the documentary is second to none. The ocean here is truly mighty and marvelous, a scary and fearsome Leviathan of blue order and disorder.
The story is in two parallel parts. One is the journey of Alessia Zechino who overcame the galloping horses of her temper to become an intimidating, competitive free diver. The other is a portrait of Stephen Keener who travelled the globe like Indiana Jones, in search of the great unknowns. Stephen loved exotic locations and animals. If both were hard to reach, so much the better. At home, Stephen was out of his element, and he craved whatever existed far away.
One day Stephen received the impulse to journey to Egypt, a sacred place for free diving. As fate would have it, Alessia needed a dive trainer. She was striving to beat the world record of 101 meters held by Hanako Hirose. After relentless training, both Alessia and Hanako trade world records. Then Alessia achieves the unthinkable, freediving 104 m down into the dark unyielding sea.
Through their dedicated training and charisma Alessia and Stephen fall in love. Alessia achieves Italian fame, but soon gets the ignition to be the first to dive the Blue Hole, a deadly location that has taken the lives of 100 divers. Alicia will do it only on one condition: If she is trained by Stephen Keener. The two athletes work painstakingly day and night with nothing left to chance. Both of them are two oceanic beings who live for water and love. The climax is an ultramarine blend of Shakespeare and “Avatar” with some sinister traces within. The ocean itself seems fickle, fearsome and sentient.
This documentary illustrates a kaleidoscopic battle between ocean and Ego, and it is enthralling, tense and terror inducing.
Write Ian at [email protected]
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Okay, I’ll see it for the beauty of the locations. But I am a REAL “free diver.” That is, I hold me breath instead of scuba for the freedom of grabbing lobster and spearing fish in around 20 feet of water. I’ve been as deep as 45 feet, chasing a peacock flounder in Bonaire. My final bucket list item was snorkel-only 2 weeks in Raja Ampat.
But this sort of “free diving” is insane, like the idiots who suffer an die on Everest in the spirit of “mountain climbing.” 100 dead in the Blue Hole. Recording “championships” for suicidal acts like this is like offering an award to whoever can snort the most meth, hooray for you.