The Deepest Breath

Beautiful, but also nuts.

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One can certainly see the appeal in being able to hold one’s breath for extended periods of time, under water: the meditative state the person must put themselves in to calm the mind and heart, the extreme focus on a specific set of actions (get to the depth and retrieve the tag and swim back up), and the conquering of fear and doubt. I respect a person’s ability to sublimate aspects oneself to a goal, but, man, I wished, the whole way through this, that these people would take up a different, less dangerous sport.

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Netflix is excellent at documentaries. They know how to pace the interviews, how to gather and present footage of events, and when to recreate particular scenes. It would be very easy for them to slant things in a certain direction, but I’ve seen many documentaries on Netflix and I’ve felt, with every one, that care was taken to simply tell the story without an angle that tries to influence the way the viewer feels about it. (This is type of unbiased storytelling is especially noticeable in the Shark Whisperer.)

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I could feel, almost from the beginning, that someone was going to die but the way the material was presented it was never obvious who it was going to be. And even then, we aren’t hit over the head with it, we aren’t suggested how we should feel about it. I appreciate that I’m given the space to think what I want about it.

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There is some footage of some of the world’s most beautiful places on Earth in this. Recommended.

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