Nicolas Cage Is at His Maniacal Best in The Surfer

by

Originally posted on May 18, 2024, during the Cannes Film Festival, we’re re-sharing this article now as cinemagoers worldwide prepare to experience the thrilling portrayal by Nicolas Cage on the big screen.

The atmosphere at the midnight showing in Cannes was exceptionally charged, as the audience hollered and roared even before the movie started. They were clearly ecstatic, fittingly so, upon seeing Nicolas Cage, who seemed equally excited walking into the Lumiere for the debut of “The Surfer“, a delightfully eccentric, sun-scorched blend of psychological thriller and dark comedy. The story revolves around a man who is obsessed with surfing and is willing to sacrifice everything to pursue it.

In my perspective, Lorcan Finnegan’s film offers some unexpected layers of political and emotional intensity, but it predominantly resonates on a frequency reminiscent of ’70s B-movies. This includes vivid slow-zooms, dreamy sequences that blur the lines between reality and fantasy, chilling flashbacks, nods to New Wave Australian cinema, and another unforgettably eccentric portrayal by Nicolas Cage, which undoubtedly adds to his collection of such captivating performances. Throughout the movie, I found myself immersed in a world steeped in pathos and madness that he so masterfully crafts.

to bond with his son who mostly lives elsewhere; to live in the past by buying back his childhood home; to ignore the problems in his marriage, which he believes he can fix once he has the house and beach again. However, a higher bidder threatens to take the property, and a group of eccentric local surfers obstruct Cage and his son from surfing at their cherished childhood beach.

Stepping foot on a paradise-like coastline, I found myself face to face with a hulking figure emerging from the shimmering sea, donning a Santa hat. “Stay away, don’t swim here!” he bellowed repetitively. Engaging in a heated debate about the beach’s accessibility – technically public, but illegally occupied by these men – I encountered another imposing figure named Scally (Julian McMahon), clad in a vibrant red beach poncho and exuding an ominous aura. He was the undisputed leader of this group, and his chilling gaze warned me to vacate the premises – he had no interest in any confrontation. With my son’s safety on the line as these menacing beachgoers closed in around us, I reluctantly retreated to the parking lot.

However, he never departs from the scene instead. The remainder of the film unfolds in this parking lot, the bordering wilderness, and the beach beneath, where Nicholas Cage’s character gradually loses all his possessions, sanity, and grasp on reality as he battles both psychological and physical conflicts against a cult that eventually reveals itself to be akin to Jordan Peterson’s philosophy. At night, he witnesses these men performing bizarre, violent rituals (“Before you can surf, you must suffer,” they chant while branding themselves with a wave symbol). He also discovers Scally’s Instagram videos where he rants about the necessity for men to have a space to release their primal impulses freely. This entire plotline maintains an off-kilter tone—it’s eerie, yet humorous at times.

Frustrated and infuriated, Cage lingers at the beach parking lot for several days, growing more agitated, redder, and bloodier. He reaches out to the local police, only to find they are in league with the cult. The townsfolk dismiss his pleas for aid, attributing his peculiar behavior to typical boyish antics. A woman remarks, “Boys will be boys!”, suggesting that their lawless beach activities are preferable to them abusing their wives at home. Cage initially ignores a local man (Nic Cassim), who has lived in the parking lot for years in his car. However, he later needs the man’s binoculars for spying and trades him an expensive pair of sunglasses, which sets off a chain reaction of Cage giving away all his possessions. The beach boys subject him to a series of cruel tricks and manipulations that lead to the loss of his watch, then his phone, then his wedding ring, then his car. He ultimately loses his shoes and walks on broken glass intentionally scattered across his path.

As a passionate movie enthusiast, no one can convincingly portray this escalating madness better than Nicolas Cage. His eyes, magnified by the intense zoom of the camera, brim with tears at frequent intervals. He lets out furious roars, sorrowful wails, and heart-wrenching sobs. He gulps down questionable water, grimacing as he spits it out. His skin is a testament to excessive sun exposure. The pinnacle of his despair arrives when a rat bites him, followed by a violent act of retaliation against the homeless man’s vehicle he now calls home. Starved and desperate, Cage contemplates consuming the dead rat he had pulled from the ground. However, in a fleeting moment of lucidity, he instead stores it in his pocket, glancing up to see a terrified onlooker running away before him.

In a violent confrontation with a surfer near some water, Cage retrieves a rat from his pocket and forces it into the man’s mouth. “Eat the rat!” he yells. The crowd at Cannes went wild over this line, which is likely to become another famous quote from Nic Cage, joining classics like “Put the bunny back in the box,” “I lost my hand, I lost my bride,” and “Not the bees!”, among others.

After the screening concluded, Cage quickly grabbed the microphone and expressed his gratitude towards the festival and the fans. He reminisced about a film he made there titled “Wild at Heart“, which won the Palme d’Or in 1990. With a gleeful grin, he then inquired from the festival director, Thierry Friemaux, on how to say “eat the rat” in French. Turning back to the audience, he excitedly shouted into the microphone, “Mangez les rats! Mangez le rat!

Read More

2025-05-02 18:54