MANY films have done this before: a story where the thread of fate sews the lifeline of characters and, barring continents and borders, proceeds to show that there is no such thing as accidents. Alejandro Gonzales Iñárittu (director) and Guillermo Arriage (scriptwriter) did it big time in Babel, with the interlocking fates of disparate individuals happening in four stories in three countries. Now, Jieho Lee in The Air I Breathe collapses the tale in several hours, amazing us with how four persons would share destiny, though in such impossible rhythm.

The story begins with a gambler who has to produce the money he owes a gang. The leader of the gang who goes by the name of Fingers—because he cuts the fingers of those who cross him—gives the gambler hours to produce the money. The gambler is harassed and then released so he could come up with the amount. The gambler decides to rob a bank in order to produce the money.

GASPING FOR ‘AIR’. Brendan Fraser and Emile Hirsch become the subjects of the vagaries of destiny and fate in The Air I Breathe.

In that torture chamber, the gambler encounters a gangster who happens to be the trusted bagman and henchman of Fingers. This gangster is able to “see” the future. When he makes his rounds, he sees where events are going. This power seems to come from way back his childhood. He trusts this dangerous instinct of his and it never fails him. 

The gangster feels it when people around him are not telling the truth. For a gangster, he is inward-looking and conscious of the vibrations embracing the air around him. This makes him a good gangster, for he is always several steps ahead of others.

The leader of the syndicate depends greatly on this gangster that he trusts him with his nephew. The gangster becomes a mentor to the nephew who is not cut out for the job that his uncle is preparing him for. The clumsy nephew, in fact, spells trouble to the gang and, indeed, endangers the life of the gangster. For some reason, the nephew becomes involved in a homicide, which is the only real accident in the film. The gangster saves the nephew who soon learns that life on the fast and hot lane is not meant for him. The gangster feels good that he has, after all, some role in the lives of others. That he can change the life of others.

The gangster, for the first time in his life, experiences not being able to see the future. He is not able to predict the direction of certain actions around him. He feels good. Fate and future, two endpoints he sees clearly, are not able to influence for the first time a major event in his life. He is not able to see the future and instead of seeing this as a weakness, the gangster finds the new occurrence a liberation.

Battered and wounded, the gangster finds pleasure in the situation. Much to the surprise of those around him in the hospital.

The leader of the gang shows him the photo of a pop star, and the gangster, again, does not see anything in the photo. He sees no future in the pop star, as he puts it.

The pop star does not know that she is being managed by Fingers. Soon, she is brought face to face with the boss and the pop star refuses to be her talent. She refuses to go on with her career. The pop star, like the gambler earlier, sees the gangster working for Fingers.

A doctor who is in love forever with another woman tries to save the life of that woman. The pop star will play a great part in the life of this woman loved by the doctor. Then the gambler is soon linked up with the pop idol.

People live and die fast in The Air I Breathe. It is a disconcerting feeling to see people dying fast and meaningless in this film. The deaths, however, seem to offer a life-extending mechanism. It is even baffling to see lives and deaths coming together as a banquet of destiny. It looks like everyone in the film is star-crossed and they all live and die under a similar star formation, within each other’s proximity. If this film were a eulogy, one can fully and truly say that these individuals really touched each other’s lives, and they may not be even aware of it.

Media releases about the film talk about it being based on the Chinese proverb regarding the four emotional cornerstones of the human universe, namely: happiness, pleasure, sorrow and love.

I have difficulty relating the proverb with the film. It is not so much because the proverb does not resonate in a real-life situation, but that the film does not seem to get any benefit from the proverb. It is perhaps because proverbs are really simplistic compared to the complex psychologies of individuals whose life-events are soon caught in a conflagration. There seems to be no freedom in this film. What we have is a set plan, a combo of life offerings that, however much you attempt at independent and reckless thinking, always brings you back to the site of the original sin or curse.

At a certain point of the film, the proverb is more about predictability, the bane of any moviegoer who likes to believe there is a mystery unfolding onscreen rather than a template being followed.

If there is unpredictability in the film, it is the performances of the actors that seem to emanate from four different corners of the world, breathing four varied wind directions. Andy Garcia is in fine form, a golden artifact from The Godfather past. Garcia is funny in a morbid way. Forest Whitaker as usual is able to fuse for us the dimensions of a truly tragicomic character, funny even when there is nothing left for him. Sarah Michelle Gellar ceases to be the ingénue in this film. Her pop idol is a brittle person and when at the end she gets the boon, we applaud and wish her well.

I have always been partial to Brendan Frazer for his kind of comedy, all glamour and screwball. In this film, he is unusually brooding but deathly human because somewhere in the gait, and the waiting, lies a man surrendering to the air around him. His memory untouched by destiny is the one that is able to lift him up every now and then.

The Air I Breathe can be viewed in many ways: a parable, an allegory (flawed because it is not able to make up its mind about being symbolic and material/real), or simply a work that deals with violence but throws in unexpectedly humor of the base kind, even when characters are falling on the wayside, stumbling upon each other and dying.

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