THE SURFER is a sundrenched, blood-soaked examination of toxic masculinity and generational trauma that hearkens back to the symbolist dramas of the 60s and 70s with its surreal overtones and pointed commentary. It is also the kind of film for which Nicolas Cage was gifted to us by the universe. If for no other reason, it is more than worth seeing just to bask in the mannerist magnificence of a performance rooted in reality but transcending the bonds of verisimilitude. It works, as does the film, because it is at once perverse, absurd, and achingly human.
Cage plays a character known only as The Surfer, an affluent man who has returned to Australia after many years in California (hence the American accent) hoping to recapture the happiness of his childhood before a family tragedy took it away. He is also hoping to mend his broken marriage and to purchase his childhood home that overlooks a prime surfing beach uncluttered by tourists. He is about to find out why sparsity of surfers when he attempts to take his teenage son (Finn Little) surfing there, only to be savagely rebuffed by a local surfer screaming in his face, “don’t live here, don’t surf here.” The Surfer, still operating in a reasonable universe, points out that it is a public beach, and moreover, he lived here as a kid and will soon be living here again. The situation escalates courtesy of Scally (Julian McMahon), the red-clad leader of the pack, as it were, whose charismatic smile masks ruthless brutality cloaked in cheeriness. The dichotomy is unsettling, but not as unsettling as what will follow, as The Surfer chooses to stand his ground only to have his humanity stripped from him bit by bit with all the psychological pain of an actual flensing, and his struggle for even a sip of water stymied by deliberate aggression.
This is a grueling film that builds slowly but methodically, gradually but inevitably breaking down civilization until it becomes a veritable Lord of the Flies, with The Surfer persisting in demanding his human rights as though his life depended on it, which in fact it eventually does. By the time he’s been reduced to grimy rags and dehydrated incoherence, we wonder why he persists when he could easily walk away, but director Lorcan Finnegan and writer Thomas Martin remind us that this is not about a stolen surfboard or riding a wave to shore. This is about the need to feel in control of one’s life despite a basic, even primordial instinct to belong, and the tension between clinging to that need and moving on that overwhelms even the instinct for self-preservation. As an allegory for xenophobia and its effects, it’s succinctly devastating; as an allegory for fascism’s appeal, it is chilling.
Cage works his magic in every moment, every twitch of his mouth, every bemused stare, every desperate attempt to confront the pack that The Surfer uses that is misguided at best, suicidal at worst. When he tries to connect with his son after losing face to the pack on the beach, it is visceral, and we can almost feel his heart being torn metaphorically from his body. When he aims a gun at the guard dog left to keep him from water (tainted beyond any normal desire to drink it), the struggle to survive battling The Surfer’s human decency is almost too painful to watch, as is his naked need to be accepted by his persecutors. Finnegan underscores Cage’s performance with slick camera work that externalized his emotional state, including a fish-eye lens that annotates the story, and close-ups that pick out key elements. The images are bracing, evoking the proper disquiet in the viewer, yet also allow us to experience The Surfer’s necessity to fight the impossible. As the impossible incarnate, McMahon, in his hooded beachwear the color of blood and his sinister bonhomie, is Satan incarnate beyond the tether of empathy, beyond ability to see an outsider as even remotely human.
THE SURFER contrasts the natural beauty of the beach with the horror that men in power can unleash deliberately or not. This intelligent rendering of inhumanity tests us even as the story tests The Surfer with his dread and defiance. It’s anything but an easy film, but it is one that is hypnotically engrossing as we struggle to not see ourselves in what is transpiring on screen.
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