The Air I Breathe
Directed by Jieho Lee
Stories are connections, networks of ideas packed together as a unified experience. Artistic blueprints shouldn’t replace the finished product. That’s the messy structural issue plaguing The Air I Breathe, which desperately tries to dance the circle of life and eventually follows something more like a square. A handful of stories cycle through the movie over the course of one hectic urban day, all of them linked together by desperation and crime. In theory, first-time director Jieho Lee has imagined an enterprising opus—but the sturdy concept never stops to inhale its constituents.
The Air I Breathe has a more random arrangement of star power than Southland Tales, and its conceits are a lot harder to figure out. Forrest Whitaker, Kevin Bacon, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Andy Garcia have never been impeccable performers, but they look like frayed magazine cutouts in this uneven mash-up of jagged conflicts. It’s particularly frustrating to watch Whittaker, the strongest thespian of the bunch, desperately mine for gold in a narrative landslide.
He plays a downtrodden stockbroker frantically trying to repay a mob debt caused by his sloppy gambling habit. The discomfiting tragedy actually works for a little while—partly because it’s the opening of the movie and there isn’t too much going on, but there’s a definite sense that Lee has created a strong formulation of sympathy with Whittaker’s character. He captures a remarkably surreal moment in the first few minutes, when a butterfly lands at the edge of the doomed man’s bed in the middle of the night as he contemplates a flash of beauty in the darkness. The inspiration works, but it’s a temporary lift.
After managing to uplift in its opening scene, The Air I Breathe cycles through the emotional playbook, and each segment finds another struggling soul at its shaky center. It’s not enough to let the material speak for itself—the movie obviates its pattern by naming characters after their expressive values. Hence Whittaker’s stockbroker is Happiness, Gellar’s misguided pop singer embodies Sorrow, Bacon’s life-saving doctor has a whole lotta Love and Brendan Fraser—portraying a prophetic hitman at the behest of Garcia’s over-the-top crime lord “Fingers”—gives Pleasure, particularly to Sorrow, when he rescues her from his boss’ oppressive hands, thus completing the cycle. It’s the type of messy collage that makes a Pollock painting look sleek.
Paul Haggis’ Crash showed how an overabundance of a single grave dramatic ingredient (in that case, racial epithets) can cheapen dramatic essence and come across as forced. The Air I Breathe continues that path by shoving its wannabe poignancy to the surface. At the very end, the movie concludes where it began—but it’s such a rushed experience getting there, you can practically hear the screen hyperventilating as the credits roll by, and audience eyes roll back.
Directed by Jieho Lee
Stories are connections, networks of ideas packed together as a unified experience. Artistic blueprints shouldn’t replace the finished product. That’s the messy structural issue plaguing The Air I Breathe, which desperately tries to dance the circle of life and eventually follows something more like a square. A handful of stories cycle through the movie over the course of one hectic urban day, all of them linked together by desperation and crime. In theory, first-time director Jieho Lee has imagined an enterprising opus—but the sturdy concept never stops to inhale its constituents.
The Air I Breathe has a more random arrangement of star power than Southland Tales, and its conceits are a lot harder to figure out. Forrest Whitaker, Kevin Bacon, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Andy Garcia have never been impeccable performers, but they look like frayed magazine cutouts in this uneven mash-up of jagged conflicts. It’s particularly frustrating to watch Whittaker, the strongest thespian of the bunch, desperately mine for gold in a narrative landslide.
He plays a downtrodden stockbroker frantically trying to repay a mob debt caused by his sloppy gambling habit. The discomfiting tragedy actually works for a little while—partly because it’s the opening of the movie and there isn’t too much going on, but there’s a definite sense that Lee has created a strong formulation of sympathy with Whittaker’s character. He captures a remarkably surreal moment in the first few minutes, when a butterfly lands at the edge of the doomed man’s bed in the middle of the night as he contemplates a flash of beauty in the darkness. The inspiration works, but it’s a temporary lift.
After managing to uplift in its opening scene, The Air I Breathe cycles through the emotional playbook, and each segment finds another struggling soul at its shaky center. It’s not enough to let the material speak for itself—the movie obviates its pattern by naming characters after their expressive values. Hence Whittaker’s stockbroker is Happiness, Gellar’s misguided pop singer embodies Sorrow, Bacon’s life-saving doctor has a whole lotta Love and Brendan Fraser—portraying a prophetic hitman at the behest of Garcia’s over-the-top crime lord “Fingers”—gives Pleasure, particularly to Sorrow, when he rescues her from his boss’ oppressive hands, thus completing the cycle. It’s the type of messy collage that makes a Pollock painting look sleek.
Paul Haggis’ Crash showed how an overabundance of a single grave dramatic ingredient (in that case, racial epithets) can cheapen dramatic essence and come across as forced. The Air I Breathe continues that path by shoving its wannabe poignancy to the surface. At the very end, the movie concludes where it began—but it’s such a rushed experience getting there, you can practically hear the screen hyperventilating as the credits roll by, and audience eyes roll back.
