Nicolas Cage Makes 'The Surfer' Special

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Some actors worry about getting typecast, but only Nicolas Cage has thrived with a type of his own design. Cage’s penchant for onscreen excess holds unique appeal in popular culture. His talent blends anger, frustration, and outright confusion with such precision that no other performer could possibly convey the same discordant notes.

Cage won his Oscar 30 years ago for Leaving Las Vegas, playing a gambling drinker with a death wish, and that could have been enough for him to call it a day. Yet the levels of trauma, anxiety, and deep-seated dread in that performance continue to yield dividends with wild-eyed performances that enthrall and entertain even as they tap into an undercurrent of dread. Modern Cage roles bring gravity and soul to the weirdest places, from Mandy to Pig, both of which treat ridiculous scenarios as deadly serious endeavors.

Still, it’s usually fun to watch Cage freak out, and that’s what equipped him for the era of online memes that revitalized his currency in recent years. Cage worked through a slew of B-movies with the same conviction he brought to A-list projects, and in the process, transcended the boundaries of the material. Ethan Hawke once said that Cage was “the only actor since Marlon Brando that’s actually done anything new with the art of acting.”

His latest vehicle, The Surfer, embodies the way such talent can make or break a movie. Irish director Lorcan Finnegan’s dizzying thriller is a high-wire-act of subjective storytelling, as Cage spends nearly the entire runtime roaming an Australian beach, baking in the sun, and gradually losing his mind.

The film begins with Cage’s character attempting to take his young son to the beach to ride some waves and bond, but they quickly encounter a gang of territorial young men led by a cult-like guru (Julian McMahon) who tells them to get lost. To make matters worse, after he lingers around a while, the jerks steal his board, too. Nothing comes easy to the poor guy.

The ensuing chaos finds Cage, credited only as the Surfer, roaming the adjacent parking lot and attempting to make sense of his conundrum. Finnegan’s eerie, atmospheric storytelling makes it hard to predict exactly what sort of movie is gradually taking shape: The Surfer teases a classic variation on what Quentin Tarantino has called the “revengeamatic” genre, as our furious antihero works his way toward payback.

However, it has even more in common with the classic Australian New Wave thriller Wake in Fright, in which a man stranded in the outback gradually gives into his wild side as the primal elements around him take over. Shot in beautiful hues of orange and red, The Surfer tips into surrealist territory as the character loses track of what he really wants. Think of it as a sun-soaked variation on Punch Drunk Love about the romance between a man and his waves, as well as the obstacles keeping them apart.

The greatest punchline of The Surfer is that there’s no real surfing in the movie. Cage learned how to do it anyway. “Nic did some surf lessons early on,” Finnegan told me in an interview this week. Decades ago, Cage surfed a bit with veteran surfer Kelly Slater, and nearly drowned in the process. “He was pretty nervous about the sharks,” Finnegan said.

The filmmaker always considered Cage as key to the project. “I remember reading the script and picturing him in every scene,” Finnegan said. “It’s got drama, comedy, action, some horror. You’re with somebody pretty much the whole time so they need to have an interesting face. Nic can do all of that.”

The Surfer is a strong vehicle for Cage because it enables him to make sense of the material. This is wild and weird filmmaking that doesn’t pander to audiences. Nevertheless, with Cage at its center, there’s always a sense that the movie has a point, some grand, unifying logic that will reveal itself with time. As always with this quintessential actor, he keeps us hooked.

The Surfer screens May 1 - 7 at the Southampton Playhouse. Tickets are available here.