Breathe

A film about the life of Robin Cavendish. Robin is twenty-eight, working in Africa and newly married. He contracts polio. He is paralysed from the neck down, cannot breathe on his own, and the doctors give him a few months. At that time patients in his condition lived in hospital, in a room, attached to a machine, and going outside was not considered. Robin and his wife Diana refuse it. They leave the hospital. Then a friend, an inventor working at Oxford, builds a respirator into a wheelchair. That lets Robin leave the house, and the same design was later produced for other patients. Robin lived for decades, far beyond what the doctors said. The production history is personal: one of the producers is Jonathan Cavendish, Robin's son. The baby in the film is him. It was Andy Serkis's first film as director. Andrew Garfield plays Robin and Claire Foy plays Diana. An affecting example for anyone who likes true stories and optimistic drama. For a viewer looking for restraint, the film softens the difficulties and makes the daily weight of the illness look lighter than it was.