Shaunak Sen’s poetic documentary chronicles the efforts of three New Delhi men to help the city’s birds of prey.
The first shot of “All That Breathes” explores a vacant lot at night, tracking rats and feral dogs through puddles and piles of refuse. Your instinct might be to recoil from a tableau of urban squalor, but there is a quiet, rapt attention in the images that suggests a different response. Even in the clogged thoroughfares and crowded neighborhoods of big cities like New Delhi, where this remarkable documentary unfolds, we are closer to the wildness of the natural world than we might suppose.
The three principal human characters in Shaunak Sen’s film have devoted their lives to caring for black kites, birds of prey almost as unloved in Delhi as scavenging rodents and canines. Wounded kites and other raptors, excluded from a local avian hospital because of their nonvegetarian ways, find their way to Wildlife Rescue, a small clinic that doubles as a workshop for the assembly of soap dispensers. There, Nadeem Shehzad and Mohammad Saud, the brothers who founded Wildlife Rescue, work with their associate Salik Rehman to rehabilitate the birds until they can return to the skies.
Their efforts on behalf of the kites were the subject of an article in The New York Times in 2020. The methods of “All That Breathes,” which mentions that piece, are more impressionistic than reportorial. There is something inherently mysterious about birds and their interactions with people, and also something unmistakably spiritual about Wildlife Rescue’s devotion to their well-being.
Not that there is anything gauzy or mawkish about the film. Sen finds intimations of deeper meaning by focusing on the day-to-day practicalities of rescuing kites. In one riveting scene, the men save a wounded kite from a riverbank, swearing and complaining as they navigate a tricky, absurd and potentially dangerous situation. Mostly, the birds arrive in cardboard boxes hauled across the city by Salik or one of the brothers. As the kites recover, they move to cages on the rooftop.
Wildlife Rescue has applied for a grant to expand and modernize its operation, and “All That Breathes” in part tells a hopeful story of patience and persistence in the face of obstacles that include bureaucratic red tape, family tensions and city traffic. But then a wave of murderous sectarian violence sweeps through New Delhi. The causes of the upheaval and its aftermath — and the conflict between India’s Hindu nationalist government and the country’s large Muslim population — become part of the film’s atmosphere, like the smog and the noise.
Neither a nature documentary nor a political lecture, “All That Breathes” is a subtle, haunting reflection on the meaning of humanity — on the breathtaking kindness and heartbreaking cruelty that define our wounded, intrepid, predatory species.
All That Breathes
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
