Taking Breath

In a sneaky ambush, actor SIMON BAKER has revealed himself to also be a skilled director as he translates Tim Winton’s beloved book Breath for the big screen, in the process stirring deep feelings about his own beach upbringing.

- Eliza O'Hare

It was always going to be a big deal, stealing Breath from the Australian imagination and making it real. Maybe that’s why it’s taken nearly 10 years to get here. Anyone who was going to take on this classic novel and transform it into a film was shouldering a huge responsibility. In Australia, it’s just about every second person’s favourite book, and those odds only increase the closer you get to the coast.

This is not the first screen adaptation of Tim Winton’s work. His novels Cloudstreet; That Eye, the Sky; and In the Winter Dark, and his short story collection The Turning have all been produced, but Breath, Winton’s eighth novel, is the one that feels as if it carries the most weight. It was a responsibility Simon Baker recognised. It’s ambitious, for your first turn as a feature film director, to mess around with characters and stories that your audience already holds so dear.

On a 42-degree dry Sydney day, we arrive at our bush valley location: a wooden house owned by a friend of Baker’s who works in theatre and film. A collection of timber houses on the property are constructed from film sets (the Charlotte’s Web set sits close to the river) and a mishmash of other props from his friend’s projects. It feels like the perfect setting in which to talk to Baker about his new film — lounging on hammocks with cold beers, surrounded by weathered timber walls, convict stone, and white gums along the river’s edge — especially as he has just flown home from New York.