In its treatment of the emotional and physical
extremes of big-wave surfing and the reality of death this movie
transcends its subject matter.
Since humans came out of the trees, or out of the swamps
if you believe the aquatic ape theory, as I do, the earliest
stories we have told ourselves have been of monsters of the
deep.
The first literature we know of: Beowulf, The Epic of
Gilgamesh features heroes battling watery
monsters. No wonder big-wave surfing, a modern day trope of the
ancient theme, where surfers seek a “chilling ecstasy” in waves
that can kill, exerts such an arresting influence on filmmakers and
audiences alike.
Films about big-wave surfing almost all suffer by succumbing to
the irresistible temptation to over play the hand. Waving around
fully erect for 90 minutes in a state of over engorged high drama
makes for great trailers but terrible films. Heavy
Water is a different film altogether.
The latest incarnation Heavy Water, by Sea of
Darkness director Mike Oblowitz, examines the nexus of death
and big-wave surfing through the deadpan delivery and life arc of
Nathan Fletcher.
Films about big-wave surfing almost all suffer by succumbing to
the irresistible temptation to over play the hand. Waving around
fully erect for 90 minutes in a state of over engorged high drama
makes for great trailers but terrible films.
Heavy Water is a different film altogether. Eschewing
the constant drama it spends most of it’s time building and
maintaining an atmosphere of claustrophobic dread.
In its treatment of the emotional and physical extremes of
big-wave surfing and the reality of death it transcends its subject
matter.
The greatest film about surfing ever made, I think. Please allow
me to persuade.
Leathered ancient Woody Brown sets the emotional tone of the
film in the opening montage.
“I loved to challenge death,” he claims, with the resulting
thrill giving his life a frisson the unjazzed could never
comprehend.
Nathan is introduced. We are all familiar with the broad
narrative arc: son of Herbie Fletcher, brother of Christian,
grandson to big-wave pioneers Flippy Hoffman etc. In a sense, it
was a risk to hear Nathan speak. In doing so the danger was the
mystique that surrounds him would be gone and gone for good.
A man of few words might be concealing anything, or nothing at
all.
Thankfully, in Nate Fletchers case it’s a whole heap of the
former.
Despite the advantages of the groomed industry upbringing
Fletcher found his own path pretty quickly and it was radical.
Falling into the orbit of surf/skate/punk icon Jay Adams shit got
very loose, very quickly. The opening stanza of the film explores
the influences of a radical California skate/punk culture that no
longer exists. Its tentacles extended outwards across the
Indo-Pacific.
Like every other cat my first OS trip was Bali.
Lacking a budget we crashed in the Ulu’s warungs, which you
could do for free if you could handle rats, monkeys and lying on
bamboo mats. I met Jay Adams and Owl Chapman and that’s what I
thought surfing was: mushroom milkshakes, airs at low-tide
Racetrack and Team Pain tattooed on a neck.
Jay had scary, don’t-give-a-fuck eyes and an unbelievable
intensity which flies out of the screen in a scene where Nathan
interviews him on home video. The film mostly skirts the darkness
of Jay Adams. The next time I saw him was in the tenements of
Sunset Vistas on Sunset Point. Jay busted through the door one
night, as naked as the day he was born, hid in the bathroom for
hours while men with baseball bats roamed the neighborhood, then
slid into the surf and swam to safety somewhere. A dangerous
friend.
His wasn’t the only radical friendship cultivated by Fletcher.
He got cosy with the Irons Brothers at Pipeline. A mutual
admiration developed. A kinship with Bruce had parallels with
overbearing and aggressive older brothers, Andy gave Bruce hell and
although it’s never explicitly stated in the film the presence of
Christian in Nathan’s life has a hard edge to it that no editing
can hide.
Things came to head on a pre-millennial trip to the Mentawais
which coincided with Andy’s 21st Birthday. Andy tried to drink with
Matt Archbold, a very unwise move according to Christian. He
stopped breathing, poisoned. It was Nathan who found him and
brought him back to life.
Life-and-death friendships and a calm intensity in heavy water
dominate the second half the film as a sense of inevitability
settles on the film. People seemed marked for death, or greatness,
or both in the case of AI.
A delicious irony propels the narrative. Despite the
Laird/Kalama team bathing in the glory of the tow-in revolution it
was Nathan’s father Herbie who pioneered the use of power in the
surf zone with jetskis at Pipeline. And it was Nathan who swung the
pendulum back to paddle surfing in giant surf on the outer reefs of
the North Shore. Phantoms, Himalayas, Outside Alligators, all tamed
by Fletcher and pals on dedicated sleds built to get in early in
thirty-foot-plus surf.
I fell head over heels for the film at this point.
Hollywood would have ran straight ahead to the tragedy of Sion
Milosky’s death at Mavericks and Nathan’s redemption waves at
Cloudbreak and Teahupoo but Oblowitz detours left, into surfboard
design. We meet a barrel-chested, long-haired barefoot shaper,
Leroy Dennis, and the story of eleven and twelve-foot
surfboards.
History and lineage flow through into the present. The Buzzy
Trent outline, the Brewer rail profile. Combined with Nathans
re-introduction of the four fin it illuminated a feature of his big
wave paddle-ins. He gets in earlier, cleaner and cuts a deeper,
purer line from a more forwards stance than any other big waver.
It’s something never mentioned but it becomes obvious in the
film.
From outer reefs to Mavericks, to the left at Jaws, Nate gets in
better than anyone.
How do people survive giant surf? The answer is, they don’t
always.
The death toll slowly ticks over. Year on year. Mavericks surfer
Grant Washburn reminds us that you are pushing up against human
limits and it’s not a case of mind over matter. Shit goes wrong,
people die. Fletcher’s strategy for survival is one of limited
exposure. It’s the same one used by American author Jim Harrison as
outlined in his obit in the NY times.
In this case, it applies to eating but it makes more sense when
considering giant surf.
“The idea,” Mr. Harrison wrote, “is to eat well and not die from
it — for the simple reason that that would be the end of your
eating.”
We all know Sion Milosky drowned at Mavericks. The details make
for some of the most powerful and moving cinema ever made about
surfing. Nathan had done the business and got out, limited
exposure, Sion was on a roll and wanted to charge on.
Fletcher heads back to the harbour to drop off Danny Fuller and
comes back out with a new board. In late afternoon fall light, and
to Fletcher ‘s incredulity, Sion is gone. A panicked search ensues.
Milosky is found face down still attached to his board floating
around the inside rocks.
Cold and dead.
A victim of the limits of human experience being violated one
too many times and what Fletcher described chillingly as a failure
by skis in the line-up to account for “inventory.”
I’d always wondered about the timeline of that year. Fate
brought me into contact with Nathan at the high point of his
big-wave journey. We crossed paths on the small bridge at Teahupoo
on the morning of the Code Red swell in Tahiti before he entered
the water.
A few hours later, I witnessed first hand and close-up the
infamous Teahupoo monster he rode and that could have easily
claimed him, like Mavs did Sion.
Sion died March 16, 2011. July 12 Nathan paddled an extra
perfect massive wave at Cloudbreak on a pink ten-footer. August 27
he got the Code Red Teahupoo wave.
That’s a gnarly few months in any estimation.
What is obvious from Heavy Water is that Nathan
Fletcher is a man whose inner and outer worlds exist in a strange
kind of asynchrony. When I met him on the bridge at Teahupoo he
seemed almost preternaturally calm and composed. He describes the
mission as being disorganised and his internal state as a nervous
wreck. Chaos was the dominant theme that day at Teahupoo.
It seemed inevitable human beings would be crushed under the
weight of mountains of deformed bacterial-green ocean.
Gendarmes prevented boats leaving the harbour. It was after
midday when I finally snuck aboard a vessel after a whole lot of
hustle. The lagoon was heaving with current like a tsunami. The
first wave I saw was a Bruce Irons beast that ripped his shorts
off.
Within minutes, Nathan was being whipped in.
Memories are unreliable, I recall something so dark as to be
subterranean, the footage shows a wan sunlight illuminating the
wave. I remember screaming, horrified screaming, but that might
have been my internal monologue. Even today, I have no words to
describe it, except for deeply terrifying. My stomach felt full of
ice cold gravel.
As the moment of impact became inescapable Nathan submitted to
fate, “Oh well I’ve had a great life, humans just don’t handle
this”.
But he did. He came back.
The film could have ended there. But as a coda to a life of
extreme wave chasing Nathan planned a stunt to acid drop a white
crested boomer from a chopper.
“This has to be lame,” I thought. A lame, Hollywood gimmick.
It is not lame.
It is so fucking good.
I loved this sequence so much.
It is so well shot, so masterfully edited with so much flow with
a soundtrack that paws along underneath like a caged beast pacing
in a cage.
When Darrick Doerner made a cameo as safety officer in blue camo
I was in ecstasy. No spoilers. Some will see it as a stunt.
I say, appreciate it on it’s merits, as a masterpiece of
filmmaking.
I watched Oblowitz’s Sea of Darkness anchored up off
Sipora. The dream of “60 feet on the waterline” affected everyone
who viewed.
This film, which explores why we do what we do, who we are and
how the granite strata of fate traps us all, is better.
The best surf film ever made. I urge you to see it, in the
strongest possible terms.
Heavy Water opens in 150 cinemas across Australia tomorrow (June
26); UK Tour Dates
here.
USA cinema release to come.
