Nicolas Cage navigates choppy waters in this bonkers Australian flick about a man so determined to join the surfing ranks of his childhood town that he quite literally goes insane. A pre-warning is that those who don’t like Cage (a rather Marmite type of situation for film fans) may not like The Surfer, as it relies on him much like The Fanatic relies on John Travolta – in other words, a fair few close ups of his ailing face and some classic Cage animalism are central to Lorcan Finnegan’s thriller. This is, however, good news for those who lap him up. The Surfer is kooky, strangely profound, a little bit disgusting, and at times veers into the so-bad-it’s-good genre – although it is never entirely clear why.
Cage is excellent as “the Surfer”, a high-flying businessman with an estranged kid and divorce papers to sign. He is intent on buying his father’s house on the shore front, the one he grew up in, perhaps in the hopes that this will solve his relationship problems. But times have changed, and the idyllic Australian beach he used to surf on is presided over by the sinister Scally (Julian McMahon) and his gang. At first preventing him and his son – and any of those who dare step foot on their beach – from surfing the waves, things spiral when the Surfer’s board is stolen and he starts to plot against those who have equally stolen his dream. Battling strange occurrences, even stranger locals, the Surfer is left with only two options: back down, or fight for his rightful place on the board.
In one of his talks at The Edge, writer Mark Hadley described four categories of Australian films: the historical epic, the confession, the kitsch comedy and the nihilistic drama. The Surfer sits perfectly in the middle of the latter two, strangely funny despite its dark material: “we embrace quirkiness like insanity is a path to a golden Oscar”, Hadley says. No doubt the hallucinogenic trips Finnegan (despite being Irish!) takes us on match the fairy dust delusions of Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom or P. J. Hogan’s Muriel’s Wedding. But what Hadley (or Hadley’s mother, rather) also says is that “if you don’t laugh, you cry”. And Cage does a fair bit of both. With strange music and sweaty close ups of faces throughout, The Surfer is also genuinely claustrophobic and uncomfortable for a film that takes place almost exclusively in a beach car park. Is it the sun? Is it the gang on the beach playing with him? Or has he gone completely mad? The Surfer emits paranoia as slowly, people he knows start not to recognise him – and in turn, we are paranoid with him, sweating at the collar, doubting what we previously saw or thought we understood. Nevertheless, something more important comes out of this sticky, psychedelic trip – the fact that the Surfer will simply not let go. Finnegan’s thriller pits man against man in a fight for territory, red hot rage pulsing from those who are denied the right to claim what is theirs. I was reminded of Olivier Abbou’s Furie (Get In), in which Adama Niane plays a husband and father who goes mad when he and his family are locked out of their house by a couple of squatters after returning from their holiday. Niane’s character, Paul, just like the Surfer, grows obsessed with those who have told him no, as they have rendered him powerless in the process, as less of a man. This status, this badge, this medal needs to be (re)earned, and can be rewarded only after the stranger has proved himself – in both cases, with violence.
At times, The Surfer is seemingly a little repetitive, with Cage wallowing alone in the car park in varying stages of decay. The house he is attempting to buy remains underused, only ever in the background – though this may be down to budget, I wonder what a final standoff or chase could have looked like in the very property the Surfer seeks to make his. As he is prevented from buying it, so he is quite literally prevented from riding the wave (metaphorically speaking), and Cage is fantastic at portraying this downtrodden resilience, getting back up time and time again – I’m not sure anyone could have pulled it off quite like him.
