AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Here's an idea for a summer movie. Take some pumped-up beach bullies...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE SURFER")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Don't live here, don't surf here.
NICOLAS CAGE: (As The Surfer) grew up here.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Don't live here, don't surf here.
RASCOE: ...Throw in a dash of toxic masculinity, add some sunbleached insanity from Nicolas Cage...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE SURFER")
CAGE: (As The Surfer) You eat it. Eat the rat. Eat it.
RASCOE: ...And you have "The Surfer," the latest movie from Cage, who is, of course, The Surfer. He's a father returning to a childhood beach in Australia with his son, but the locals known as the Bay Boys won't let them surf. The movie's director, Lorcan Finnegan, joined me recently, and I'll have him pick up the plot from there.
LORCAN FINNEGAN: He, being a kind of father, feels that he's being disrespected by these guys. He did grow up there when he was a kid. So the son's embarrassed by him because he wasn't able to stand up to these guys, so his son leaves. But he returns by himself, and he stubbornly is going to stay there because he's also waiting for his mortgage broker to call and say that he will get the money to be able to buy back this childhood home that he grew up in. But gradually, he starts losing things bit by bit - his phone, his shoes, his wallet. He ends up kind of going into a sort of a fugue state, where he doesn't really even know who he is anymore because of the heat of the Australian summer and all these people messing with him, whether they're gaslighting him or they're actually showing him who he really is.
RASCOE: Well, and what do you think about that? - because so much of the movie is about a real estate deal. Like, he wants to get his childhood home. You know, his wife is trying to divorce him. His son is, you know, estranged, and he wants to buy it all back. He wants to - he feels like getting this house, getting this property, is going to fix it.
FINNEGAN: He thinks if he gets that, then that - it will have a ripple-down effect, and his wife will return to him, and his son will love him, and he can kind of relive his own childhood with this family. The course of this journey that helps him learn that it's actually not the materials, things that he needs, and it's something more primal and simple - he just wants to go surfing with his son.
RASCOE: But is that part of what this movie is about, is about stripping down the materialistic things and also, like, the idea of what masculinity has to look like and getting to the core of yourself?
FINNEGAN: Yeah, exactly. It's almost like a very extreme therapy that he goes through. And yeah, it does. It examines fatherhood. It examines masculinity, in a way, and how people can be drawn towards these very toxic kind of characters who are also very charming and charismatic, like the character Julian McMahon plays, Scally.
RASCOE: Scally, yes - he's the leader of the Bay Boys. He's almost like a cult leader, kind of. And, you know, that idea of modern men - they're soft, and so they have to release their inner animal. What does Scally kind of represent?
FINNEGAN: Well, that section of society, you know - the kind of Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Tim Martin (ph) kind of person. But he's a slightly ambiguous character, as well, because I think from the audience perspective, it seems like he's trying to help Nic. Like, he doesn't have bad intentions, or maybe he does, you know? So he's kind of going along that line. There's also a little bit poking fun at that, you know, like, boys not letting other boys play in their treehouse.
RASCOE: (Laughter) Yeah.
FINNEGAN: You know, they've got this tiki hut down on the beach, and they won't let him join the gang, you know? But of course, if you're told you can't join the gang, all you want to do is join the gang.
RASCOE: Is there something about surfing that transcends every day? Is there something about it that - is there an adventure there that you can't get elsewhere?
FINNEGAN: Yeah, well, I mean, I think with this story, it was kind of baked into this idea of the actual narrative where, like, a wave forms over time, and it builds.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE SURFER")
CAGE: (As The Surfer) Brewing and churning for days, weeks, months, sometimes even years. It's all building to this breaking point, a short, sharp shock of violence on the shore. And you either surf it, or you get wiped out.
FINNEGAN: That - you know, that's the beginning of the film. He says that to his son, and then the rest of the story, you watch that happen, you know, in slo-mo. So there is something with surfing, though, that's, like - it has a really interesting kind of culture. Being part of the group of surfers who - particularly who kind of take ownership of certain waves or certain breaks on a beach is kind of fascinating. It's fascinating to watch.
RASCOE: Well it is - you know, every surf movie kind of has that, you know, surfing is life. Is it because it's, like, you know, the idea that surfing is also it's riding nature, right? Like, it's - you're not fighting against it. You're learning how to conquer it, go with the flow. That's - I mean, that's a lesson for life, right?
FINNEGAN: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And be ready to go and be confident to go because if you second guess yourself when you're about to kind of get on a wave, you'll crash, you know?
RASCOE: That's Lorcan Finnegan. He is the director of "The Surfer." Thank you so much for joining me.
FINNEGAN: Yeah, thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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