Max Morgan’s intimate debut feature Breakwater is a film full of subtle performances and rife with some gorgeous cinematography. With a pace that verges on glacial, its final act is a thoughtful and bold swing.
Oxford student Otto (Daniel McNamee) is down on the Suffolk coast to meet his girlfriend Lucy’s (Agness Halladay) family and friends when he encounters the lonesome John (Shaun Paul McGrath), a retired angler who lives nearby. As tension builds between Otto and Lucy due to his connection with religion and thus not wanting to be intimate, he finds himself finding more in common with John, and both discover they are grieving in their own ways.
Grief and forgiveness take centre stage in Max Morgan’s debut film. With Otto, we have a young man who has been led down a path by his neglectful mother, and because of one mistake, has tried to steer his life towards a better direction. So he plunges himself deeply into religion, is teetotal and celibate. What he is looking for is someone to help him overcome the guilt he feels over an incident that occurred when he was a young teenager. Still, Otto is stuck in an endless and directionless limbo that he feels he wrongly deserves to be in. He wants to forgive himself, but he just doesn’t know how.
With John, we have a man whose guilt for a multitude of things has weighed heavily on him for a long time. His inability to accept what he is causes huge ramifications in his life. Because he has stayed in the same town since his wife passed away, the typical town rumour mill has given him the silent torment treatment, which wrecks him. So, combined, they are a bit of a mess, but they are silent and introverted. You can see why they would connect, and with a hint of attraction or interest at the start between the two, their stories will combine with eventful results.
Both Daniel McNamee and Shaun Paul McGrath are terrific in Breakwater; they have a tremendous chemistry that allows the awkwardness to shine through as the duo swap who is in command. Instead of McNamee’s Otto being instantly attracted to John, he instead has an interest in him, he is intrigued with the man, and that is what then naturally grows. There is a confidence in his performance (as well as Agness Halladay’s, but we will get to her later) that betrays that this is their first film role.
With Shaun Paul McGrath, he plays his character, John, as a guilt-ridden mess of a man. As his character’s story evolves throughout Breakwater, you quickly realise how fantastic his performance is. We are almost always left guessing which John we will see. Is it going to be the calm and thoughtful John who teaches Otto how to fish, or is it the devastated and utter mess of a man that we see when he expels the truth of his own past? It’s a performance that is dramatically and purposefully broad. While we are nervous of the man, you are entranced by him.
In a film where both leads shine, Agnes Halladay deserves a ton of credit for her performance. She provides an excellent anchor to the ever-mounting tension between Otto and John in the film’s final third, allowing McNamee’s Otto to undergo more development and get to that fuly realised and fre version of himself that he deserves to experience.
Breakwaters’ score is an odd one to pin down. In the opening scenes, the score almost needlessly overwhelms with how intrusive it feels with what we are seeing. Yet, it eases down and matches the quiet, sombre tone that Max Morgan has so carefully depicted. In the second half of the film, the gentle piano smoothly moves through each scene to assist in each moment of realisation that Otto feels.
Evan Bridges cinematography is gorgeously purposeful with its framing. The majority of scenes with Otto and John together are immensely tight, almost suffocating, to convey how pulled in the two have become with one another. Yet in their final scene in the kitchen, they are shot in one-shots, usually with one character at the very edge of the frame, showing how strained and apart the two have eventually become. Add to this the fact that Morgan and Bridges opted for using as little artificial light as possible, allowing Breakwater to have that distant feel. Our characters are almost always covered in shadows as they surround themselves with majestic skies. It is a visual treat of a film whose story doesn’t always match what is being presented.
The general thread of the film is strong, and the performances are top-notch. However, the script occasionally slips into allowing itself a couple of monologues too many, no matter how well-delivered they are by McGrath and McNamee. You feel them, and in a film that strips away so much artificiality and feels down-to-earth and present, it becomes a slight shame.
As Morgan takes his film down an ever-increasingly dark tone, you wonder quite how far he will take it and if the film will lose itself in its melodrama. Thankfully, it holds itself together due to the slow pace he has instilled, which ultimately makes Breakwater an ambitious yet strong feature.
★★★★
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