Nicolas Cage has made a profession from his extremely entertaining surroundings chewing. He follows a efficiency type he calls “Nouveau Shamanic” – an exaggerated type of methodology performing the place he acts in line with the character’s impulses. This enables for the wild, unpredictable outbursts his characters are identified for.
Cage movies are additionally often about masculinity: its worst excesses, the parameters limiting it, and what ennobling variations of it would appear like.
The Surfer, a brand new Australian characteristic movie from Irish director Lorcan Finnegan, leans proper into masculinity as a theme.
Our unnamed protagonist (Cage) is returning to his former Australian dwelling from america. He’s newly divorced, and attempting to purchase a beachside property to win again his household.
He takes his teenage son (Finn Little) for a surf close to the property, however they’re run off by an unfriendly pack of locals.
Returning alone to the beachside automotive park to make some calls, he’s besieged there over the subsequent a number of days by the identical gang. They’re led by a terrifying middle-aged Andrew Tate-esque influencer, Scally (Julian McMahon), who runs the seaside like a mix of a frat bro social gathering and wellness retreat.
The protagonist’s quick descent into dishevelled, dehydrated delirium because the group’s hazing escalates, fuels a lot of the primary two acts.
Fish out of water
It’s inconceivable to think about an actor aside from Cage who might make a personality like this so pleasing to look at.
From the primary moments, he appears pathetic: giving his uninterested teenage son metaphorical speeches about browsing, dropping arguments on the cellphone along with his dealer and actual property agent, reeking of pomposity and desperation.
The sense of a person out of his depth is compounded by his Americanness contrasting with the actual model of Australian masculinity the locals show. Each sorts are brash and entitled, however with fully other ways of expressing it.
It is a man out of his depth.
Madman Leisure
Cage’s distinctively American confidence has no resistance to the terrifying switches of Australian masculinity from pleasant to teasing to violent.
“Don’t live here, don’t surf here,” they hiss at him on first assembly, forcing him to retreat, cowed, to the automotive park, the place he stays for many of the remainder of the movie.
The wide-open and the claustrophobic
What a stroke of genius it’s to make use of this single location.
Filmed in Yallingup, Western Australia, The Surfer fantastically captures the pure environment, gorgeous views and shimmering warmth of Australian coastal summer time.
On the similar time, a confined, interstitial semi-urban characteristic like a beachside automotive park feels so bleak and uninviting. The one facilities are an overpriced espresso cart, historic payphone and a dingy rest room block.
The beachside automotive park feels so bleak and uninviting.
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As a movie setting, it’s each a spectacular wide-open vista and stiflingly claustrophobic – an ideal mechanism for The Surfer’s psychological horror.
It should have been enticing in getting the script funded as properly. With such an reasonably priced location, extra of the funds would have been freed up for an enormous identify like Cage.
A contemporary Wake in Fright
With its oppressive setting, overexposed orange and yellow gentle and grade, and a sweaty spiral into insanity, The Surfer invitations comparisons to Wake in Fright, Ted Kotcheff’s 1971 brutal depiction of Australian males and their ingesting tradition.
Each happen at Christmas and have an antagonist who enjoys confidently explaining their doubtful ethical worldview to everybody. Nevertheless, Wake in Fright’s horror lingers as a result of we all know the tradition stays even after the hero escapes it. The Surfer struggles just a little extra in touchdown the ending.
The movie’s depiction of masculinity echoes Wake In Fright.
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For the imply, violent, misogynistic villains to be defeated, it could be unsatisfying for Cage to stoop to their degree. This implies – with out spoiling an excessive amount of – Cage stays an oddly passive character all through the movie, whereas others carry out the avenging actions.
The one means the protagonist’s masculinity might be resurrected as upright, moral and empowering is for the character to actually flip his again on the vengeance we’ve been ready for him to ship.
It’s not that the movie has an inarticulate grasp of its personal politics, however extra that the in any other case terrific script by Thomas Martin feels written right into a tough nook.
A blast alongside the way in which
I don’t wish to indicate that this ending means The Surfer isn’t an absolute blast alongside the way in which. Lots of the enjoyable is in anticipating every dreadful humiliation – and it in some way turning out worse than you might have anticipated.
A spilled espresso results in ingesting recycled wastewater which results in chewing on a lifeless rat, and we nonetheless haven’t reached the bottom rung on the ladder of indignities that Cage’s character suffers.
In much less expert arms this might really feel nasty or gross, however the hallucinatory high quality of Finnegan’s path makes it really feel virtually elegant. And Cage’s pleading, groaning, sobbing and gibbering really feel plausible and relatable.
The pathos works – and it’s fairly humorous too.
The Surfer is in cinemas from right now and streaming on Stan from June 15.
