Review: Who is JOB 7.0!

Jamie O'Brien's latest offering is perfect. Don't let the elitist fun police tell you otherwise.

The genius is not in how much Jamie O’Brien does in “Who is JOB 7.0″ but in how little. This is the work of an artist so sublimely confident that he doesn’t include a single shot simply to keep our attention. He reduces each scene to its essence, and leaves it on screen long enough for us to contemplate it, to inhabit it in our imaginations. Alone among online surf serials, “Who is JOB 7.0” is not concerned with thrilling us, but with inspiring our awe.

The series creates its effects essentially out of visuals and music. It is meditative. It does not cater to us, but wants to inspire us, enlarge us. Bali surf boxing? Poopies‘ rodeo? A barrel contest over eyebrows? The challenges are perfection. Simple, joyous perfection.

Only a few shows today are transcendent, and work upon our minds and imaginations like music or prayer or a vast belittling landscape. Most are about characters with a goal in mind, who obtain it after difficulties either comic or dramatic. But here we see genuine fun playing out. Genuine fun minus the strictures of Venice Beach and also Venice-adjacent.

“Who is JOB 7.0” is not about a goal but about a quest, a need. It does not hook its effects on specific plot points, nor does it ask us to identify with the elitist too-cool-for-school fun police. It says to us: We became men when we learned to think. Our minds have given us the tools to understand where we live and who we are. Now it is time to move on to the next step, to know that we live not on only land but among the waves, and that we are not flesh but intelligence.

I must admit that I am proud to see this 7.0 iteration. Proud beyond words for it was I, Chas Smith (back when I was a younger man named “Charlie”), who directed the original film “Who is JOB” some 7 years ago.

And nearly 7 years after it was made, it has not dated in any important detail, and although surfing maneuvers have become more versatile in the modern age, my work remains completely convincing — more convincing, perhaps, than more sophisticated maneuvers in later films, because it looks more plausible, more like documentary footage than like elements in a story.

“Who is JOB” is a classic in the genre, one of the better surfing films ever made and “Who is JOB 7.0” sets the bar for the people. For this is what we want, 1% be damned.