‘The Surfer’ Is A Beautiful Breakdown [London Film Fest 2024 Review]
Nicolas Cage fans craving their next dose of “What The hell Did I Just Watch” cinema are in luck. This year the most bombastic member of the Coppola clan has already starred in Arcadia and Longlegs. However, he’s also the lead in a new Australian psychological thriller The Surfer. Admittedly, the script lives somewhere between Wake In Fright and Point Break. However, it uses its exploration of masculinity as a trojan horse for something much more sensitive. While we watch men misbehave and navigate their own version of the bro code, we are also getting a front-row seat to back-burner trauma that is now boiling over. The Surfer sees Cage take a turn as a man pushed to the edge, as he is othered during the loneliest time of year: Christmastime.
This time, Cage plays a character known simply as The Surfer. He seemingly wants to share a part of himself with his teen son during the holidays. Their relationship is strained, and we discover The Surfer is not quite over his ex-wife. Unfortunately for him, though, she and their son have moved on without him. So, our surfer’s attempt to buy his childhood home and take his kid surfing in the place where he spent his youth is a bid to put band-aids on many emotional wounds even before we even really dig into this story.
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When The Surfer is stopped by locals from taking his kid to the water, he begins to unravel. This leads to animosities between him and The Bay Boys, much like the waves in the water he can’t reach. The Bay Boys are a group of men who seemingly surf all day and torment any non-locals who dare get too close to the water. They seem to have a hold on the area and run amok without suffering consequences.
As the war between The Bay Boys and The Surfer wages on, we get glimpses of the traumatic incident that forever changed him in his youth. The childhood home he is adamant about buying and the beach he is suffering countless indignities to return to are parts of an attempt to fix the unfixable. He is trying to transfer an idealized version of childhood onto his ex-wife and their son. He is not chasing the rush of a wave, but instead the warmth of a family he does not have. In what is possibly the most relatable of any of the unhinged movies Cage has gifted us with this millennium, his character’s real battle is with his unhealed daddy issues.
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Many of us may ask why he doesn’t just go to therapy instead of living out of a car on a beach and avoiding his real problems. However, most of us have done things we aren’t proud of when we find ourselves in a bad mental space. When the things we buried rise to the surface, forcing us to confront them without any warning, it gets dicey. This might explain why the film’s dreamy aesthetic juxtaposed with the harsh reality our unstable protagonist faces is intriguing. It feels very relatable to how many of us are holding onto our delululemons as the world continues to be a raging dumpster fire around us.
Directed by Lorcan Finnegan (Vivarium, Nocebo), The Surfer gives Cage ample room to do what he does best: spiral. Watching him go from a slightly manic dad to a man on a mission, to a dude having a moment is a sight to behold. If I may be controversial for a minute, I think this is Cage’s best performance of the year. He is tasked with grounding a movie that tackles childhood trauma, the cult of toxic masculinity, and localism.
The film is also chasing what feels like a 1960s aesthetic—possibly as a callback to his romanticized version of his childhood—that’s confusing at times. While the random shots of animals inserted at random and the off-putting magical music queues are laughable, it doesn’t distract from the dawning realization that this man is mid-breakdown. His pain is palpable as The Surfer tries to grapple with what his father did and wonders if he’s destined to follow in his footsteps.
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While screenwriter Thomas Martin’s (White Widow) second feature muddles a few of its more interesting parts, it is hard not to lean into this idea of the cult of man. It’s also difficult to deny the cool factor of a Christmastime thriller set on an Australian beach with retro sensibilities. The Surfer is a decent film for the most part. It keeps the audience guessing about what is real and what is not. The film is an exercise in empathy and understanding that takes a scenic route through the thriller subgenre.
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The Surfer
Summary
‘The Surfer’ features Nicolas Cage’s best performance of the year.
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