Overview
A man returns to the idyllic beach of his childhood to surf with his son. When he is humiliated by a group of locals, the man is drawn into a conflict that keeps rising and pushes him to his breaking point.
Lorcan Finnegan’s latest film, The Surfer, sees Nic Cage playing a father who returns to his hometown to purchase his childhood home near the Australian beach where he spent his youth. Planning to take his son surfing to share his love of his hometown with his offspring, the pair find themselves confronted by a gang of surfers, led by the guru-like Scally (Julian McMahon) who territorially tell him “no live here no surf here” and make clear that he should leave town. Whilst his son leaves, the Surfer steadfastly refuses to move on, encountering a homeless man living out of his station wagon who has had confrontations with the gang previously. As the days lead into each other, the dreams and hopes of The Surfer are slowly stripped away through taunts and abuse by the gang as he desperately strives to complete his desire to purchase the house.
Well shot, and with a Cage performance that steps close to, but doesn’t descend into, the usual manic Cage aspects, on the surface this is a solid exploration of toxic masculinity and territorial surfing culture, as well as one man’s struggle to confront the demons of his past against all odds. The gang of surfers have an almost Fight Club Project Mayhem attitude to them, with one leader putting them through punishments before they can be accepted into the club – a man must be broken down completely before he can rise up again. The film also has a throwback style to the exploitation films of earlier decades, with Cage being stripped further and further down of all dignity as the film progresses, with tensions escalating constantly.
Unfortunately, for me at least, the film was not only too heavily signposted as to where it would all lead, but after the first 20 minutes had passed, and it was clear that everyone in the town was connected to the surfer gang, I found myself questioning why, exactly, was Cage’s character sticking around? From that point onward I simply stopped caring for his plight as everything that happened was, from that stage, his own fault. Any sensible person would have just driven off and left the town – and I get that he still dreamed of a return to his childhood, and it was that dream and confrontation of his own father’s issues that was the basis for his staying, but it just didn’t hold up for me.
Maybe the film isn’t to be taken literally, and could be analysed as a descent into a purgatory-like realm of tests and trials before you could ‘rise up’ (or in this case, surf), after all Finnegan’s 2019 film Vivarium explores psychological and metaphysical themes in a similar manner, but whereas that had a reason for the leads to be trapped in their descent into madness, this film simply doesn’t.
The Surfer didn’t quite land for me, but maybe expectation was too high for it and a revisit in a year or so will get a different result.