Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella, Heart of Darkness, appears as an oblique talisman in Breath, Simon Baker’s adaptation of Tim Winton’s award-winning 2008 novel. We see it first when thirteen-year-old Bruce ‘Pikelet’ Pike (Samson Coulter) sits quietly reading in his high school library. Some months pass and the book reappears: Pikelet pictured clutching the battered Penguin paperback as he walks through the schoolyard.

Conrad’s story of a journey into the African jungle is an exploration of fear—Marlow’s journey out into the world becomes a journey into the bleakest corners of his heart and soul. Set in the late 1970s, Breath offers its own untamed horizons for exploration, both internal and external around the rugged south Western Australia coastline; Denmark standing in for the fictional milling town of Sawyer. For Pikelet and his best friend, fourteen-year-old Ivan ‘Loonie’ Loon (Ben Spence), new vistas open when they taste the freedom gurgling in the surf and each becomes involved in increasingly risky feats of self-discovery. Rising and receding waves suggest the push-pull of what excites and alarms them about growing up. ‘I dare you to dare me,’ Loonie tells Pikelet, demarcating the psychological terrain of their friendship.