This film features Nick Cage at his Nick Cagiest. But even if you aren’t a Cage completist, you should see this challenging, disturbing and thought-provoking artwork which deals with profound questions in an interesting, albeit convoluted, way. If you like to leave a film talking about its ambiguity and intentions, Surfer is for you. You will certainly have more to talk about then after any Marvel movie.
A mind-bending meditation on the nature of reality and time, it left me with more questions than answers. On the surface it’s about mid-life crisis, “you can’t go home again,” and the toxic masculinity of a surfer cult. It is also about the enormous consequences of decisions.
Warning: there are some very difficult to watch scenes in middle. So much so that I almost left; only my faith in the redemptive ending of American movies allowed me to stay. No more, no spoilers.
A good film leaves you talking about it and asking questions. The moviemakers leave you with the feeling that all these horrible things could happen to anyone if they are surrounded by a large, cohesive group of malicious men. It’s all men; a half-dozen female ornaments hardly advance the plot or the exposition all. One woman with a camera saves Cage’s character at a critical moment although she is skeptical of his sanity (and rightly so).
As is often the case in a good film, a small detail, seen in passing (a watch) makes a point; in this case, a subtle comment on the nature of time. In fact, there are so many unanswered questions that you just might want to see it again. It certainly would be easier to take the second time around and you’d know what to look for.
So far as I can tell, the previous work of the writer and director don’t hint at this level of profundity. Behind the camera, a pair of Dubliners. Director Lorcan Finnegan spent a decade doing shorts, and has been doing features for a decade—albeit none I have seen or heard of. But of course I’m not a professional critic. Writer Thomas Martin (sole writer credit) wrote shorts and television for a decade, and has done a handful of unheralded features.
As I like to say, run, don’t walk to see this.