“Where are we going?” 

“We have an appointment with the undisclosed.” 

The dawn arrives in Sawyer, a small, unimpressive coastal town in the south-west of Australia, and so does Sando (Simon Baker), as enamoured and unenlightened fourteen-year-olds Pikelet (Samson Coulter) and Loonie (Ben Spence) climb into his truck to chase the surf and all it brings. As they pull into the dusty red dirt bordered by the dry bush and the gentle lapping of the ocean, Sando awards the boys with their first wetsuits – they inhale the smell of neoprene, sweat, and brine – and they’re drunk on excitement, having only surfed bare-backed in the icy waters. A moment where they teeter on the precipice of boyhood and manhood, of the ordinary and the extraordinary, of cowardice and bravery in the shadow of dawn and the enigmatic Sando. Adapted from Australian author Tim Winton’s 2008 novel of the same title is Breath (2018), and the moment revealing Australia’s contemporary frontier – no longer the red dirt and dry bush characterising identity – the coastline immortalised in cinema and reflecting Australia’s complex history with identity, liberation, and it’s landscape. 

This key moment immediately follows Pikelet declining his father’s suggestion they take the dinghy to fish in the bay – a pastime previously enjoyed and confined to the safety of the boat and childhood – so that he, Loonie, and Sando might take Sando’s dinghy out next dawn and discover the undisclosed. They disembark the dinghy to run barefoot, surfboard in hand, through the unruly bush to reach the dunes overlooking Barney’s, awe-kissed by the endless ocean and 14-foot Great Pointer shark inhabiting their cove. A coming-of-age moment that sees Sando, an older local surfer who is both surf-messiah and father-figure, journey the boys into conquering the landscape themselves. As Sando disappears into the surf, Pikelet and Loonie are visibly chafed by the idea that the shark may be lurking, and grapple with their own bravery and cowardice. Here, we are introduced to Australia’s new masculine hero – a drover that moves with the waves and shepherds the nation into its contemporary identity – the ‘Bronzed Aussie.’ An urban hero sun-kissed in budgie smugglers who conquered the coast, born from surf lifesaving made necessary by the lift on public bathing bans and sensationalised in both media and cinema (Brynes, 2019). While Sando’s own character prefers to offer “hippie shit” wisdom instead of parading around in little-to-nothing, he emanates the lone drover, skilled in navigating the land and water from years of experience. Quintessentially masculine in his wealth of knowledge and at the forefront of narratives like Hugh Jackman’s Drover in Australia (2008) and akin to the Western cowboy, unphased by the shark and enigmatic all the same. Still atop the dunes, Loonie realises that to be anything like his mentor, he mustn’t sit on the beach with Pikelet “like a couple of fucking girls,” and runs into the water. We see Loonie mark the beginning of his transition into adulthood with masculinity mistaken for loss of fear. While Pikelet’s own narrative explores other facets of masculinity, Loonie’s weaves into threads seen at the forefront of history – searching for adrenaline and confronting danger head on in a realistic, 1970’s context. 

With Federation liberating cinema from the shackles of narratives situated in vast bushland, we return to the site of settler invasion as Breath and it’s intimate ensemble of characters explore the conquering of the landscape at the forefront of Australia’s national, and international, identity; the coast (Ellison, 2016). The film captures muted, wave-kissed colour hues that seem to emphasise the south-west coastline’s icy waters – far from the endless summer depicted in Summer City (1977) and Puberty Blues (1981), even Bondi Rescue – conforming to the Australian gothic that pits character and landscape against eachother (Buckmaster, 2018). The film subverts the medley of rolling waves, pristine sand, and tanned bodies, in favour of overcast rain and an isolated beach offering the truth that the swell is often better in winter. Yet the cultural memory held by this monolithic landscape – a place of tragedy set into effect by colonisation, remains, as does this colonial gaze inherently imparted by the omission of Indigeneity and the First Peoples of the land throughout the film (Ellison, 2016). This moment in Breath subsequently journeys the nation into its own coming-of-age, a social, cultural, and political shift following Federation from bush narratives into coastal, urban ones. The inclusion of acclaimed Australian cast members; Simon Baker (the Mentalist, the Devil Wears Prada), Elizabeth Debecki as Eva, Sando’s wife (The Crown, The Great Gatsby), Richard Roxburgh, Rachael Blake, and the documentary-like, intimate cinematography contribute to the film’s feel as something small and wholly Australian as the cast, landscape, and this moment interact to both form and question Australian identity and how it performs in cinema. When returning home in the car, Loonie tells Sando it’s easy for him to feel extraordinary because it’s commemorated in magazines and proven in trips to Honolulu Bay and Morrocco. Surfing was not born in Australia - the introduction of television and Melbourne hosting the Olympics in 1956 brought new boards and techniques, an internationally prescribed way of approaching Australia’s coast (Byrnes, 2019). Loonie’s own fanaticism about the international comes through in the way Breath feels so intimately Australian – young, and isolated. 

This key moment, of Pikelet and Loonie being introduced to Sando’s own, secret spot, forced to confront their inexperience whilst juggling excitement, offers a constructed reality of Australia in it’s own journey to forming identity that acknowledges it’s cultural memory and situation internationally – finding itself beyond the nation’s masculine hero, a surfer who wants more after conquering his ‘own’ land and coast within this contemporary narrative that wanders through the tension between the land and the self.