Sorry I have been inconsistent lately. Yesterday was the one year anniversary of my father’s passing, which is a thing in and of itself, but that feels like a lifetime ago. The past year has been one of the longest I’ve had in a long time. Maybe because I have free time, a luxury so few are afforded these days. Maybe it is because life happening slows time and work happening passes time.
For whatever reason, this year has been a journey. Adjusting to two new people living in our house and what that means. Learning how to carry the lessons my father taught me while not carrying the burdens and learning the difference. Dealing with the current geopolitical state and our own domestic political woes.
Strife and suffering abound, they are plentiful. But I would be remiss if I didn’t focus on the good the past year has brought. I am playing music again, in a semi-band. We hosted a house show for a touring musician, The House of Wills, and two local artists, Wayne Dang and Ryan Cacophony (Steelboy/Talk Me Off).
Please ignore the mess in the backyard, we’re in the midst of building a community garden and a spiral labyrinth in this yard. It already looks much better, but I don’t have pictures to prove it. You’ll just have to trust me.
I’ve also been adjusting to a new schedule. Some days I take Adrianne’s cousin to work, an hour round trip. Longer if I am taking Adrianne to work as well. Another hour to an hour and a half round trip if I’m doing pick up duty. We also had my cousin Meredith here for a week visiting my mother, so another wrinkle in life. All of this may feel tangential, but if you’ll follow me a little longer you’ll learn about The Surfer.
We also saw Momma in Durham, a sold out show in the venue where I got married. A place I have played more than anywhere else in my life and it was packed to the gills with strangers. A kind of surreal moment, a real Welcome Back, Kotter intro. Glad to know people do see some bands in Durham, even if it is never the local ones.
Something that has been a source of great joy for me is my Tuesday night routine. A small group of friends seeing a movie at an indie theater almost every week has become one of my favorite nights. Even if the movie isn’t the best, the experience usually is.
Last week, I saw an action movie disguised as a horror movie about the troubles that plague our world. This week, I saw a surreal horror movie about the troubles that plague our world. Where Sinners tackled racism, cultural appropriation, white privilege and so many other timeless American traditions, The Surfer takes a swing at the global issue of consumerism, toxic masculinity and class warfare.
Nic Cage stars as the surfer, a man on the verge of buying back his childhood home for $1.6 million AUD. He sneaks his son (Finn Little) out of school on the week of Christmas to take him surfing at the beach with the best view of their new home. He neglected to clear this with his ex-wife. All will be forgiven, of course, when he closes the deal.
As the pair approach the beach, they pass a Locals Only sign and are accosted by a group of surf thugs called the Bay Boys, which feels like a reference to the Lunada Bay Boys. The movie starts out as an attack on localism, before exploding into a critique of gentrification, homelessness, cults of personality and toxic masculinity.
These Bay Boys are lead by Scally (Julian McMahon), a childhood acquaintance of the Surfer who has risen to prominence as an Australian Jordan Petersen meets Joel Osteen type. McMahon is an excellent counterpoint to Cage’s everyman, exuding sleazy charisma that preys on vulnerable people who don’t have the wisdom to see the end result.
The young boys are allowed to beat outsiders near to death and the local police turn an eye. The Bay Boys drink and do illegal drugs all night. Scally sleeps with borderline underage women. A local woman tells the Surfer that it’s good that the boys have this outlet, better to beat up undesirables than to “knock the Botox out of their wives.”
A local bum (Nic Cassim) warns The Surfer away from the folly of challenging Scally and his crew. The bum lives in his Subaru and schemes of ways to get revenge for Scally taking his son away from him and killing his dog.
The movie plays with your expectations in clever ways. The Surfer drives a Lexus and is well dressed. He has an American accent. He is turned away from a local’s only beach, despite being a local. He spent the first fifteen years of his life on this beach, that was now a haven for wealthy people who use the beach as their personal playground.
As The Surfer’s life falls apart—the Bay Boys steal his surfboard, then his car, then his phone—The Surfer’s reality also starts to fall apart. His sole source of clean water is tainted by dogshit, the cop accuses him of living in the Subaru (even though he saw The Surfer in the Lexus earlier) and we are treated to a moment of hilarious catharsis with a photographer (Miranda Tapsell) who interacted with the Surfer earlier in the movie returns and shows him photographic evidence that his recent suffering isn’t all in his head.
On the note of the subversion of expectations, the photographer is the only aboriginal character encountered in the film. She is also the only person who treats The Surfer as a human. Everyone else is quick to remind him that it is locals only. When he tries to warn off a French couple, they rebuke him. It doesn’t end well.
As the week progresses, we see the Surfer transform into a man who has lost everything and the scorn that society inflicts on those on the fringes. Some of the events that the Surfer goes through are truly horrifying in a way most movies can only hint at. Cage does excellent work for most part, a restrained approach that elevates the movie.
The movie is also steeped in religious allegory, recruits into the Bay Boys are baptized into Scally’s Church of Masculinity and he is frequently framed as a flaming devil in nighttime scenes. We get a Christ Pose and the Surfer rebuked three times (a nice catch by my mother). It’s hard not to read this as a rebuke of organized religion and prosperity peddlers who also prey on the vulnerable.
By the film’s conclusion, we see a man wrestling with his values and identity when he’s pushed to the brink. We see the costs of success and the blind eyes that follow. We see the way power begets power. And we see Nic Cage turning a low budget thriller into a must see.