The Surfer
The Surfer
Why bother bringing Nicholas Cage on board if you will not allow him to go wild with an eccentric and over-the-top performance? The actor does precisely that in the gripping psychological thriller The Surfer. As he estimates the pace at which Kyle turns progressively more and more demented and his body literally starts falling apart, Cage seems only mildly insane.
That works for Finnegan (Without Name, Vivarium) and screenwriter Martin’s wish to homage, yet mock, old school Aussie New Wave pictures like Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout (1971) set in Dreamtime landscapes of lost outsiders.
Masculinity, the Big Bad of modern times, doesn’t seem off their radar but then again the acting and the cinematic devices (zooms, jump cuts, the works) are over the top and so performative that subtlety is not an option. But that’s what makes it enjoyable.
The Surfer, shot primarily in a parking lot and beach in Western Australia, is a film that deals with a man who is confined within the walls of his own obsessions. While it might sound postpartum claustrophobic for a picture whose action is almost entirely carried out outdoors, The Surfer is about a man who is trapped by his own compulsions.
Wait, there are a couple of interiors: a filthy public restroom, the interior of a few vehicles and a beach hut where disgruntled locals who oppose the unnamed lead of the film, the surfer (Cage) reside. But with every cutaway to the surfer’s jittery gaffers’ and the surf movie’s fast forward and flashbacks and sinking perspectives always seen, even above the ground, the viewer is led to assume the action is off in the surfer’s mind and he is insane.
Initially, he appears to be just another well-off suave American dad– all plushotters. Therein, he is seen driving his teenage son Finn little to a surfing point at Luna beach. There is this particular stretch of coastline which the surfer is rather familiar with as he matured around the area, in a house that a person would see clearly while in the ocean waiting for a moving wave, despite his Los Angeles accent and tone. He is looking to buy his parent’s home from a real estate agent who is a broker, but he has lost the bid again since an outright buyer has beaten him and he has to come up with another 100 thousand Australian dollars.
Cage brings a tinge of frustrated hang-up in these initial sequences, implying that the Holden surfer may not be that composed as suggested by the cream suit and silver Lexus. In the notes of the film, Finnegan and Martin narrate their story in two parts; one is the William Wyler’s film The swimmer that was based on a John Cheever’s short story where Burt Lancaster plays a rich man persuading his neighbours to let him swim in their pools to find and return to his family. The swimmer meets more and more unfriendly people behind the doors of the houses and tries to explain to them that things are not like they appear to be.
Without any similar devices we find here still a slowly blossoming motif developing around and above the more evident water based elements-and that is the confrontation. It is Steven and his son who are the tribe now outnumbered.
As the pair of surfers advance onto the beach’s shore, they are already stalked by local menacing looking people who keep shouting, “Don’t live here, don’t surf here.” Julian McMahon’s character Scally, the local thug leader of the ‘Bay Boys’ explains to Steven and the young child there is no purpose for them as tourists, ‘surfing,’ or anything; because only locals are allowed.
But the surfer can just sit back and chill in the parking lot located at the top of the hill, which is a tarmac wasteland with an anarchic survival of the fittest character to it. It is here that the surfer encounters Fitz (Nic Cassim ), who else is referred to as The Bum in the credits.
(Most of the characters are labelled “The [something]” there, even if named in the dial In other words, the surfer loses part or the total of his possessions as he stays closer to the beach, and begins to look like the bereaved father Fitz. First, the surfer loses his board – it is stolen; next, his cellphone, then his watch and the list goes on, with every losing a little more of the sanity.
Cage finds himself alone on the screen a lot during his recent performances, just like the way he was in The Old Way. Cage, who ignites great emotions when performing in front of the camera, features in some tough scenes including Shark and various Australian wildlife in the desert.
If you want to spoil the best slasher moments of the film, then keep an eye on the rat that’s sure to make you vomit. Australia is appropriate for all of these, a continent that is gorgeous but has more threats to life in the form of poisonous snakes and spiders and elements that are not friendly towards humans.
And ultimately, it feels as though the movie goes overboard, loosing all credibility and becoming self-mocking and ridicule of itself. That being said, it also occupies a space that makes it ideal for Film Festivals, as a great Midnight movie which is exactly what it was programmed at Cannes. It at least does not disappoint in its visual style and editing by the director and cinematographer Radek Ladczuk, who also worked on Nocebo, and The Babadook.
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- Genre: Thriller
- Country: Australia, United States, Ireland
- Director: Lorcan Finnegan
- Cast: Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Nicholas Cassim
