It's a bit ironic that the coal miners whose lungs are being destroyed are blowing brass musical instuments. I guess when they can blow no more they become conductors. Luv British film.
shareI've had asthma most of my life. It comes and it goes. My pulmonary function test 20 years ago, taken as part of an occupational hazard study while I was having no problems with asthma made the technician (jokingly) question whether I was secretly female because I scored fairly low even by female lung capacity standards. I always sucked my tank of air down faster than most of my dive buddies.
I sort of wonder (with no educated justification) whether large portions of my bronchial passages are simply permanently closed off by scarring due to my asthma going largely untreated as a child, yet I played euphonium for probably 30 years (and didn't stop for any breathing related reason) and my uneducated guess would be that few instruments except for tuba, trombone and flute perhaps utilize more lung capacity. It probably just meant that I had to take breaths a little more often than others, though honestly, I never noticed that effect, and coordinating breathing with other players was frequently an issue, so I'd probably have noticed if there was a big discrepancy.
I don't know how good these guys depicted in the movie actually were, but I'd bet that they were serious enough to have learned to circular breathe (which I never came close to being able to do), which I would think would mean lung function would become almost a non-issue entirely.
EDIT: Having now seen the movie... Nah, most of these guys don't seem the types to be driven enough to learn to circular breathe. Kind of surprising actually that out of a thousand miners you could get, what maybe 30? musicians so good as to win a national championship. Playing an instrument would need to be much more culturally ingrained in England than it is here in the states for that to be very likely.
LOL! I always thought the same thing than OP!
Prostitute: What the *beep* are you doing?
Johnny: I'm gonna kill a bunch of people.