Jun 2

Jun 2 FILM REVIEW: "The Surfer" is an earnest look in a strange mirror

In The Surfer , Nicolas Cage once again brings the full force of his auteur stylism, this time to the beach (filmed down south here in WA!) It tells the story of a materially wealthy, meaningfully bankrupt company man finally returning to a beachside town in order to purchase his childhood home. At the same time, his dream is not shared by his son, and his wife is leaving him. The town is a beautiful place, and yet one marked by the trauma of the loss of the main character’s father. The car park becomes the site of coinciding past and present grief, and we quickly get the sense that our protagonist has been looking for a way to return to a childlike sense of security for a long time. Since that far-off glimpse of happiness in his youth, (or perhaps it was always this way…), an intense localism has developed amongst the Surfers who reside there.

As he waits for a phone call to close the deal on his waterfront dream, he’s continually harassed by the community. His torment is shared only by an old bum who more permanently lives out of his car in the corner of the carpark. The homeless man is bound there by his trauma, not nostalgia, and Cage’s character (like the rest) dismisses him until the Bum’s plight grows uncomfortably relatable. Sun-beaten and starving, the protagonist’s mind deteriorates over the following days and the exclusion by the locals brings him to the brink.

The Surfer is one hell of a trip, one that plunges relentlessly into the weird tide of madness. Each phase of abstracting and twisted emotion brings new extremes of colour, sound, and remembered pain, all gloriously, maximally depicted through flashbacks and practical effects. It is a pointed study of how, despite material security, the forces of othering in Australian society, such as monoculturalism, classism, nationalism and sexism, remain very much alive today. These exclusions continue to wear at the social fabric where we least expect; a space of leisure, freedom, and innocence like the beach. It’s suggesting that, here where there are ostensibly no constructs of hierarchy, the animosity which divides our world into arbitrary binaries of Us vs Them runs rampant under the guise of relaxation.

The film technically executes a number of phenomenal sequences that Cage’s character is on a downward spiral, and in these flashing moments of madness are where the film feels most grounded. Although The Surfer takes a number of fun-loving risks and pays homage to works of Classic Australian horror, at its heart is a sharp critique of the boundaries of cultural exclusion that our nation not only maintains but is proud of.