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RIDING
GIANTS
5/10
USA
2004 : Stacy PERALTA : 105 mins
 In
California, the way it works is this: kids ride skateboards till they
grow up; then they ride surfboards till they grow old; then they ride
snowboards. Documentarist Stacy Peralta's movies are following the same
progression - after sk8-pic Dogtown
& Z-Boys he now turns his attention to the buccaneering wave-taming
heroes of the west-coast shores with Riding Giants. None of these
cultures prize modesty in any way, and Dogtown was hampered by
the way it felt like pro-skater Peralta and his pals were using the picture
to pat each other repeatedly on the back. Audiences had to wait until
Stoked to get a more balanced picture of the skate boom-and-bust.
But as it
turns out surfers make skaters look like models of self-effacement - which
means that Riding Giants might as well be called Blowing (our
own) Trumpets, as it ends up being little more than a platform for
the participants to bang on and on about how they pushed back the boundaries,
revolutionised the sport, ensured that the world would never be the same
again. That's "the world" of surfing, of course, not "the
world" as such. The surfers we see seem to exist in a beautiful bubble
into which no social or political concerns are ever allowed to impinge.
At one point we're told that in 1968 a "revolution" took place
- but this isn't anything to do with the evenements unspooling
across the globe in Paris. No, this revolution is the introduction of
the 'short-board'. Big f*ckin' deal, as the dudes themselves might have
put it.
There's nothing
wrong with a subculture celebrating itself, of course, and there's no
denying that what these men achieved was often spectacular to look at.
Over the course of 105 minutes, however, the waves start to blur into
each other and Peralta either can't or won't do anything to stem the tide
of boredom that many viewers may find tugging at their ankles. This is
something of a shame - for an hour or so, he delivers a ride that's often
funny, frequently exciting and almost always striking to look at. But
because his motivation is to unquestionably celebrate surfing - the film
is sponsored by Quiksilver, one of the main surf-gear companies - he isn't
able to go deeper into the subject, or examine the sport's wider context.
Instead he goes overboard trying to convince us that everything we're
seeing is of enormous significance - "we had the impression that
something momentous was taking place" - and not just the photogenic
exploits of a hermetic, self-regarding tribe.
Nagging questions
persist: such as, where are all the women in this mucho-macho environment
where bigger = better? Only one female participant is interviewed, though
we do hear from the wife of surf-king Laird Hamilton - and while all other
interviewees appear without visual enhancement from cinematographer Peter
Pilafian, Mrs Hamilton is shot in mild but distinctly noticeable soft
focus. Why? Could it be something to do with the fact that Mr Hamilton
- to whom the film becomes a fawning paean in the latter stages - is credited
as Riding Giants' Executive Producer. Didn't Peralta and his co-scriptwriter
Sam George realise how dodgy it is to spend such a large chunk of their
movie eulogising ("perhaps the greatest the world has ever known")
one of the people who's (presumably) paying part of their wages?
And despite
all the talk of 'living outside the rules' and being 'radical', Peralta's
style - talking heads mixed with chronologically-organised archive footage
- is just as MOR as it was back in Dogtown. But perhaps that's
appropriate - the men he celebrates are, we see, little more than blowhard
jocks, with 50s/60s top-dog Greg Noll in his prime the most swaggeringly
obnoxious kind of overgrown playground bully. The mid-sections do barrel
us along on the anything-goes energy of the period - only for the film
to then "wipeout" and crash on the rocks of Nietzschean narcissism
when it reaches the Hamilton era. "It's not all about ego,"
somebody remarks, entirely unconvincingly. Criminally underrated on initial
release, last year's Blue
Crush looks better than ever in the wake of this disappointingly
shallow tubthump.
13th September,
2004
(seen 19th August : UGC Edinburgh : press show - Edinburgh
Film Festival)
click
HERE for our full coverage of the 58th Edinburgh Film Festival
by Neil
Young
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