touch & flesh : ALL THAT BREATHES
by Kevin Le
This review is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative IV, a collaborative mentorship incubator between the 26th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA.
Introduction
The last few years have been uniquely challenging. In many ways, it was a transformative period filled with moments of self-discovery; on several other occasions, it was depressingly isolating with few avenues for genuine connection. So my first experience back in an in-person film festival was a much-needed respite. Opening day was an overwhelming rush, and I slowly settled in as the films passed along. Before a screening of a film in the evening, I decided to check out the festival’s lone exhibit out of curiosity. RA:X Puncta, a collaborative exhibition curated by Jasmine Gui and keiko Hart, was a rupture in many ways. Each installation moved me in profoundly different ways, but I was especially struck by Brannavy Jeyasundaram’s piece touch & flesh — a Zoom session, playing on a television in a dark room, between participants who each described emotions by locating different parts of their body.
Prompts would periodically occur, and a range of responses — from laughter to bemusement to introspection — ensued on the screen. In her artist statement, Jeyasundaram describes the piece as “an attempt to understand our bodies as archives of tenderness, joy, laughter, and love.” The installation embodies a visceral sense of “touch” which has somewhat become abstracted as a mode of interaction, expression, and caring. This encounter was a restorative one. I sat through the Zoom session with a few strangers, who filtered in and out on random occasions. It was probably the best way to experience the installation, knowing that you’re not the only one intensely transfixed. In the moments following this experience, I found myself thinking deeply about the ways it reimagines our communal futures, especially in this age of digital platforms. It ponders new possibilities while confronting the essentiality of these practices.
Directed by Shaunak Sen, ALL THAT BREATHES produced a similar sense of wonder in me. I was truly enraptured. The film follows a pair of brothers, Nadeem and Saud, on their laborious journey of saving black kites, an endangered bird species, in New Delhi. The two brothers dedicate their days to caring for the injured black kites, captured in specific detail. Their close relationship is the foundation of the story, and they are constantly within proximity to each other. In the process of documenting this ritual of healing, time and space are drawn to their furthest boundaries. I became immersed in the diegesis of their workshop, listening in on the brothers’ personal conversations about sports, politics, and life as they wrapped bandages around a kite’s leg.
Ambivalent futures
The city is divided, both socially and religiously. Its Muslim population is constantly at risk of being subjected to violence. Dilapidated homes and claustrophobic urban spaces constitute the city; in the documentary, New Delhi is perpetually nervy and on edge. This conflict establishes the sociopolitical context that simmers the entirety of ALL THAT BREATHES. I gained a clarified understanding of the fragmented space that the characters inhabit, and how, perhaps, the painstaking labour of saving wounded kites may be a salve for the brothers. Sen enables us to reckon with this crisis of isolation, gesturing towards different interpretations of what he’s trying to get at. His nuanced approach doesn’t limit the narrative’s scope to solely one of environmental concern, but also the capability of intimacy within a deeply precarious period.
Spending days in their workshop, the specificity of their labour is detailed. The ease with which they perform it suggests repetition and muscle memory. These moments exemplify their devotion to the kites. Seconds feel like hours, illustrating the deliberate mindfulness that is necessary for forming a relationship of trust and safety between the two brothers and the kites. Touch is the conduit, essential to facilitating these bonds. One scene, in particular, involves the two brothers who spot an injured kite on a riverbank. Saud is reluctant while Nadeem is eager to rescue the bird. Wading through the water, Nadeem establishes a connection with the kite by saving it and eventually healing their injuries, which is documented in the next scene. Touch is invoked in these procedural sequences, both as a means of connection and expression. The film’s depiction of intensive labour instills the frame with tactility, which compliments its slow-burn nature. I found myself constantly immersed in these sequences, which were sparsely edited and used in real time. This emphasis on the restorative qualities of touch and presence examines the alienation caused by contemporary labour, a process in which we become further disconnected from ourselves and each other.
Both works convey the boundless possibilities of physical connection and how they can be utilized to form healthier connections with each other and with ourselves. Beyond sharing the ethos of touch as a form of expression, touch & flesh also foregrounds time as part of its experience. Totalling nearly a quarter of an hour, it lulls you into a state of entrancement and, more significantly, attentiveness. When I try to somehow configure this experience into words, I always return to that prolonged feeling of discomfort. In attempting to meet eye to eye with the screen, the installation demands a stillness that feels especially durational.
When thinking of touch & flesh as a time-focused, immersive experience, I’m weirdly reminded of the climatic scene in David Cronenberg’s landmark body horror film, Videodrome. Similarly, it’s a work that focuses on the synergy between the body and technology, and how its apparatus has become increasingly crucial to forming day-to-day, social relations. Max, driven to delusions by a videotape, succumbs to the new technology, uttering as his final words “Long live the new flesh.” Maybe touch & flesh is not nearly as extreme, but I remain entranced by the screen, then and now. Time and patience — both important components of community building — figure strongly in both works as formal and thematic points of emphasis.
Although its main focus is centred around the tangible aspects of touch, touch & flesh also considers its manifestation through digital spheres. The installation puts forth the possibility of connection through platforms such as Zoom, which has become associated with remoteness and detachment. Although originally planned to be an in-person workshop, its pivot towards an online version due to the pandemic works to its advantage as a standalone work. Its tempered rhythms disrupt the ritualistic monotony of being “online” and everything it encompasses — the relentless scrolling, the simultaneous state of being “present” and not — into something truly communal, reaffirming the original purpose of the Internet as connective tissue. The digital and its inevitability has become entrenched in our daily lives, attached to our sense of self. How can we turn this technology into something restorative, something more fulfilling? touch & flesh demonstrates the capacity for online connection through its resourcefulness, while ALL THAT BREATHES represents a more tactile form of connection through physical labour.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying…
ALL THAT BREATHES’ focus on relations between humans and nonhumans is evident and well-documented. On the press circuit promoting his documentary, Sen has consistently mentioned this theme; in an interview with Docs in Orbit, he refers to the sky and the black kites as the main characters. Each of them figures prominently within the film’s formalism to mesmerizing effect. I was disoriented by long, contemplative takes of birds flying; they enhance the film’s protracted sense of time, delivering a vertiginous drift into the void. The New Delhi air permeates the film’s aesthetic; Sen describes its role as “a palpable, visceral, tactile, heavy and gray phenomenon.” The fogginess of the photography, shot by three different cinematographers, instills ambiguity in a fragile landscape on the precipice of disaster. This collaborative approach in forming the aesthetic embodies recognition toward non-human species — an understanding that we are all part of a large, unruly ecosystem. A community of air, as the brothers describe it. Acknowledging non-exploitative relations to the ocean, plants, animals, and the land we exist on is a form of care that desperately needs to be embraced.
The film’s formalist approach suggests that the beauty of the black kite, as perceived by myself and the brothers in their everyday lives, is not nearly as simple as initially presented. When recalling their first encounter, the two brothers describe them as “reptiles from their planet”, indifferent to anything but their own survival like most wild creatures. It’s exactly their beguiling, unexplained fascination with the kite that fulfills the film’s underlying theme of connectivity. Avoiding the misstep of romanticising both the brothers’ nobility and the ravenous kite itself, the film instead complicates and imbues their relationship with uncertainty. This ambivalence repeatedly occurs through the use of juxtaposition. Contrasted with these images of natural beauty — of kites staring daggers into our soul — is the background noise of violence and unrest. It’s as if the film reflexively flattens its own aesthetic affect as a gesture towards the audience. Certain scenes are overscored to extremely dramatic effect, almost in this weirdly ironic way that pokes fun at its own self-seriousness. The stillness of these shots is discomforting, further intensifying this act of bearing witness, such as when the snail slowly makes its way across the frame against the backdrop of a riot fire. In this moment of address, Sen dares to ask us — how truly beautiful are these images? The film both acknowledges the impossibility of avoiding the chaos around us while choosing to embrace the cumulative, ordinary beauty of daily life.
More interestingly, perhaps, is Sen’s initial conception of All That Breathes as a non-political film. Through his own account, he was repulsed by contemporary environmental discourse, defined by its “bleeding heart sentimentality”. This perspective is what gravitated him toward the two brothers, who struck a perfect balance between doomsday fatalism and wide–eyed optimism. Therein lies the film’s effectiveness in contrast with similar documentaries. Where the film lacks in didactic structure, it compensates with a gorgeous melding of image and sound that engenders a subjective response. I found it refreshing that the film didn’t urge me to end climate change by changing my consumptive practices, an oft-repeated sentiment that misses the forest for the trees. The images of natural beauty — despite their contextual messiness — sat with me far longer after the movie was finished. Sen’s work doesn’t have to necessarily be read as a self-serious rumination on the climate crisis. At its core is an offbeat optimism that celebrates our capacity for resilience and generosity. In the midst of turmoil, it spotlights the acts of generosity by the two brothers, who gesture towards us as viewers to embrace this same ethos of irreverence.
Through this fascinating use of tone, it shares a deep-rooted optimism with touch & flesh. Produced at the onset of the pandemic, its celebration of movement is an effective contrast to the perpetually present background noise of COVID-19 chaos and instability. In a live-streamed artist Q&A, Brannavy Jeyasundaram and Yasmeen Nematt emphasized the importance of centring joy and collective care as part of the workshop. The workshop, which by nature is inherently communal, constituted locating feelings of happiness through the body. To me, this act of movement and ‘dance’, as described by Jeyasundaram, is especially radical and is a worthy cause of celebration in spite of the strife and trauma inflicted by the pandemic. Fostering a spirit of “hope” and forms of self-care is essential to creating sustainable community relations. The installation celebrates a multiplicity of perspectives; it isn’t bound to the experiences of one person and instead provides time and space for each participant to share the distinctiveness of their humanity. Its power resides in its embrace of community. This structure is antithetical to the values of self-preservation and individualism, which are similarly criticized in ALL THAT BREATHES. If anything, it communicates to us the importance of joy in navigating our traumas and isolation. That nagging feeling of uncertainty — for the present day and for what the future could hold — feels pervasive in touch & flesh. Celebrating our quotidian, daily experiences is an appropriate response to this turmoil.
Conclusion
Although the journey of Nadeem and Saud feels occasionally hopeless, their courageous story is ultimately defined by a deep-spirited generosity towards the Earth and its non-human inhabitants. Similar to touch & flesh, it embodies a radical spirit of ‘hope’. Both pieces emphasize radical modes of caring and expression, all of which stem from an ethos of ‘touch’ and tactility, as a response to the increased isolation of ourselves and our communities as a result of the pandemic. The crisis that Sen’s film depicts indicates the precarity of public infrastructure in servicing both humans and non-humans, which has become further exacerbated.
These two works, although drastically different in form and approach, strongly complement each other. They unearthed a burgeoning desire for community, which, for myself, means kinship that I can rely on and turn to — a rock-solid, sustainable foundation that is built on shared purpose and empathy. Experiencing an Asian film festival for the first time, I felt strands of this sort of connection through sheer proximity and close encounter, being surrounded by people with shared stories, anxieties, and desires. In this age of neoliberal capitalism, however, we’ve become further atomized and our relationships increasingly eroded. As we emerge into a drastically reshaped world, how do we find stability in the form of connection? ALL THAT BREATHES and touch & flesh demonstrate the capabilities for intimacy that we have through online and physical spheres. They embrace and prioritize unconventional ways of displaying love and joy toward one another. Both works can best be described as acts of faith, nudging us towards embrace and kinship.
Kevin Le (he/him) is a writer and film enthusiast currently studying Cinema and Media Studies at York University. He is an aspiring film programmer with a deep interest in the history of genre films and the moving image as a form of political resistance. Aside from that, he is usually being heartbroken by the Toronto Raptors.
