‘The Surfer’: Nicolas Cage Rides a Wave of Madness Through a Surrealist Beach Standoff

Alci Rengifo

Lorcan Finnegan’s “The Surfer” is another one of those oddball movies that makes you happy indie cinema is still finding ways to thrive. This film has no ambitions about filling up multiplexes, dominating the box office or shattering records. The dominant element is Nicolas Cage, who has nearly made an art form of going over-the-top. His recent output has been a diverse mix of for hire gigs and genuine, maddened originality. “The Surfer” falls into the latter category. Finnegan molds his bizarre plot around Cage’s persona, tapping into its essence.

Cage plays one of those nameless characters, here known only as the Surfer. He grew up on the Australian coastline before moving to the United States. Now he is back with his son (Finn Little), aiming of buy his childhood home. Assuming he can take his son swimming, the Surfer is surprised to be confronted by a local gang of macho men, the Bay Boys, who have a strict “locals only” rule. “Don’t live here, don’t surf here,” is their motto. After being humiliatingly chased away, the Surfer is determined to get to those waters and camps out in his car in the beach parking lot. He starts spying on the Bay Boys and their leader, a strange alpha male guru named Scally (Julian McMahon). Under a blazing sun the Surfer soon faces some crushing obstacles such as lack of food, a dying phone that he needs for confirmation of the house sale from his real estate agent, and increasing harassment from the Bay Boys.

“The Surfer” is better termed an experience than a traditional narrative. Finnegan’s work tends to depend more on visual ideas and unsettling moods than plot beats. His best known films, like “Vivarium” and “Nocebo,” are nearly indecipherable. What you remember best are disturbing images and moments, like a diseased dog shaking off insects onto Eva Green in “Nocebo.” In a sense “The Surfer” is his most accessible title, even as it jumps headlong into a surrealist hallucination mixed with the marooned outsider plot of movies like “U-Turn.” Its structure is disorienting on purpose, as the Surfer insists on standing his ground even if it means digging through garbage, sipping water from a puddle and maybe eating a dead rat. Everyone is inexplicably hostile or strange, including the guy at the coffee stand who promises to charge the Surfer’s phone before it vanishes. Desperate for the real estate agent’s call, the Surfer then faces a public phone hoarded by the Bay Boys. An older man (Nicholas Cassim) wanders around with flyers, looking for his missing son. He is certain the Bay Boys know what happened. 

Nicolas Cage is the perfect vessel for this film, going off the rails in that way he defines so well. Like his best recent work in films such as “Mandy” or “Pig,” the derangement is not without purpose. His actions may seem irrational, but he is driven by the demand that he be allowed to surf in the place where he was born. Cage’s character descends into deeper levels of debasement, eventually being left without shoes, clean water or his car. His adversaries are by contrast strange territorial bullies belonging to what amounts to a cult centered on Scally. They have family barbecues, dressed like successful, common citizens while the Surfer wastes away. We’re not surprised to learn some of the Bay Boys are local cops, bankers and doctors. Is Finnegan critiquing the veneer of civilization? 

The story starts getting trippier and more fractured as it reaches its eventual climax. Cage’s performance holds it together with its wounded mania. How the screenplay by Thomas Martin resolves the whole standoff is rather smart in a surreal way. Just when it looks like “The Surfer” will completely lose all sanity, it returns to a more grounded, though not less operatic ending. François Tétaz’s shimmering score sustains even these moments with its dreamlike ambiance. You might walk out of “The Surfer” in a haze, wondering what exactly you just watched. It is unconventional and nuts, then again so is society. We live in a world dominated by Bay Boys, wandering around barefoot and confused over the irrationality of it all. Maybe that is why Nicolas Cage keeps going. He channels the craziness lurking in us all.

“The Surfer” releases May 2 in theaters nationwide.