The Stunning Beauty it Possesses Fades Away

Film Review: Ice Breath

The documentary Ice Breath is an ambitious, brilliant, and distinguished work. It is a film that can be impactful and inspiring in every way, offering much for young filmmakers, film enthusiasts, and those learning the craft to glean filmmaking and its methods from Leonard Alecu’s work. The most critical aspect of filmmaking is finding the appropriate mode of expression for each subject. It’s not enough to discover the most unique, pristine, or untouched topic that few have explored before. What matters is finding a method to express that topic—one that aligns with your budget, skills, and experience, and serves as the best way to convey that specific subject. Thus, finding an idea is not necessarily the most important part of the process, as an idea, even one never before used in cinema, may fail if the filmmaker cannot find the right approach to express it, leading to its waste. However, discovering a suitable mode of expression for any idea—whether original or previously explored—can yield commendable success.

Leonard Alecu has succeeded in finding a peculiar mode of expression for telling his story, which has effectively become the best way to address the melting of Greenland’s ice. This method fundamentally employs a poetic language. He uses his images as words—not merely to describe reality, but to function as components of a poem. Poetic cinema, shaped over the years by great filmmakers like Andrei Tarkovsky and Yasujiro Ozu, generally strives to achieve a language distinct from the everyday, mainstream language of cinema. The mainstream cinematic language is what we see in conventional films, but in Ice Breath, the filmmaker does not settle for an ordinary language. He views his subject through a fresh lens, making us feel as though we had never paid attention to this topic before. Alecu’s first choice is to use black-and-white imagery. One might assume that when dealing with nature, color is paramount, and to showcase the beauty of the sea or forest, vibrant colors are essential to highlight the blue of the water or the green of the trees. However, the director chooses to forgo color. This decision could have various reasons, but the most likely is to prevent the audience’s attention from being distracted by the blue of the sea, keeping the focus on the main subject: Greenland’s ice, not the boundless and beautiful blue of the ocean. Thus, the choice of black-and-white is a clever way to direct the viewer’s attention.

The filmmaker’s second choice in crafting this beautiful visual language is the use of slow-motion imagery, which further draws the audience’s eyes to the primary subjects. The slow-motion shots emphasize the beauty and significance of the subject twofold. These slow-motion visuals, combined with black-and-white imagery, simultaneously underscore the grandeur, majesty, and splendid beauty of these icebergs while occasionally adopting a tone of mourning and lamentation. This is a journey meant to showcase the beauty and magnificence of these icebergs while grieving their loss. The filmmaker’s approach is to display beauty and then lament its gradual destruction. The film’s language is shaped precisely by these choices. What we recognize as a poetic tone is the result of these directorial decisions, which collectively form a cohesive whole.

The director’s next decision, outside the realm of visuals and affecting the film’s soundtrack, is the highly intelligent use of music. The filmmaker knows how to steer his images toward the intended concepts by altering the music’s tone. From the outset, the music primarily serves to create an atmosphere, gradually incorporating more electronic sounds, and at times, the atmospheric quality gives way to a harmonic space. However, the filmmaker understands that an overly busy soundtrack would overwhelm the film, so at certain moments, the music transitions to silence. The intelligent use of music lies in knowing where music should be absent, or, in other words, when to embrace silence. As the film progresses toward its conclusion, with images of the solitary, shrinking, and thinning icebergs, the music’s tone shifts to something eerie and cautionary. Consequently, the poem we know as Ice Breath manifests through black-and-white visuals, slow-motion imagery, and the astute use of music. The film’s title suggests that the filmmaker views these icebergs as living beings, their labored breathing audible to us, and if we are negligent, those breaths may cease to reach our ears.

The first shot of the icebergs is a close-up—strikingly beautiful images that fill the viewer’s eyes with their lines, curves, sharpness, and softness. The final shot of the icebergs shows the camera gradually pulling away, ultimately leaving them in a long shot. The filmmaker masterfully uses the language of imagery, without dialogue, interviews, or exposition, relying solely on visuals to convey the bitter, distressing situation and uncertain future of these melting icebergs. Ice Breath is a captivating and artistic work, crafted with great finesse and attention to detail, demonstrating how, with artistic care, even icebergs can become actors and characters that tell their life stories before the camera. One can eagerly await Leonard Alecu’s next work.