The use of sounds like those can have multiple meanings that complete each other, whether you interpret it through the character’s thoughts and beliefs, state inside the storyline or the hints the director wants to communicate to the viewers. There isn’t definitely one clear meaning behind the breath sound effect and I think it’s deliberately like that to be unsettling, but I have personally interpretated its presence in two different complementary ways:
1. Tommy’s perception of himself - the interpretation that could be linked with the hallucinations of Grace is the threads binding the breath sound effect with the curse Tommy thinks he carries within himself.
Grace hallucinations are caused partly by the fact Tommy rehashes Grace’s death, the cursed sapphire representing at the same time his guilt and the idea that he is the curse. The latter slowly imposed itself and got ingrained in Tommy’s mind as his mental health decreased. “Anyone you touch. Which means anyone I touch.” - Ada, without knowing it, reinforced this idea in S5, after Ben Younger’s death.
An ungraceful line of gothic ghost Grace in S5 supports this idea: “it wasn’t the blue stone Tommy, it was you.”. Tommy feels responsible for the death of Grace, Ruby, Polly, Ben Younger, John, etc. The breath sound effect is often present in the event of these deaths. When Grace appears, the breath accompanies her presence. It’s generally when Tommy is suicidal and she pushes him to end it, to end him and the curse he spreads to anyone he touches.
This potential meaning is more evident in S5 with Grace’s apparitions, despite being very present as well in S6 in the scenes around Ruby’s sickness and death.
“Who brought this on? We brought on this curse”; “I will undo the many wrongs that I have done”; “[…] Ruby will be well if I make amends”; “I will make it go away. I will strike a bargain.” - there is this notion that he is soiled and could make up for the bad he inflicted.
On the same note, some sounds of breath are heard at the beginning of Tommy’s encounter with Diana, when he drinks his first mouthfoul of alcohol after 4 years of soberness, the discovery of his (fake) sickness, which could all be seen as events which are further tarnishing / soiling his integrity, and therefore strengthening the curse that is his person.
Throughout S6, he keeps saying he has no limitations, but he in fact keeps crossing them. He’s just reached a state where it doesn’t matter anymore.
2. The audience’s perception the director may have wanted to communicate - the sound is heard generally in events of high stress for Tommy (and the viewers since we follow him so closely): deaths of Tommy’s loved ones, his daughter’s sickness, meetings with the fascists (Mosley and/or Diana, and even once Nelson), before or during seizures (that I suspect are partly triggered by high stress). We hear the breath sound multiple times during the planned assassination of Mosley and when it fails as well. Even his first mouthful of wine can be catalogued as a high stress element for Tommy. He’s been sober for 4 years because alcohol was probably worsening his condition on some aspects. He knows how hard it’d been to stop and how easily he could spiralled down again at that point, especially after his daughter’s death. It’s a bit like jumping from a bridge and not knowing how deep the fall can go before you crash.
He needs the numbness the alcohol provides like he needed the numbness of the opium because his feelings overwhelm him. The breath sounds can be the manifestation of these (sometimes conflicting) feelings: anxiety, fear, guilt, tension, restlessness, regret, frustration, confusion, dejection, distress, etc.
Tommy had been numb for years after the war and Tommy’s feelings are resurfacing after all these traumatic events. There were all in a box he buried inside him and the shell of it is slowly cracking. It’s overflowing and can’t stop once the dam broke.
The choice of these repetitive breaths isn’t trivial though. This is a sound that could symbolize panic attacks, difficulties to breath, asphyxia / suffocation, on top of possibly Grace’s last breaths.
I think these two interpretations are intertwined. It’s confusing because it’s a retransmission of how chaotic and muddled it is inside Tommy’s mind, but also how it perpetually goes round in circles (“it’s just myself talking to myself about myself”).
(thanks to the list made by @daisybrekker, it was very helpful to check my memories of the scenes)
germansingergirl
yousharknotpass
snowghoul
izzy806
theartofmadeline
kaledo-art
dailybridgerton
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