Riding Giants

What is your ultimate image of man in harmony with nature? Until man's inventiveness contrives a way for him to fly with only the natural force of the wind to support him, Riding Giants offers perhaps the most compelling image to date: surfer Laird Hamilton riding waves as high as 6-8 storey buildings off Hawaii and California. Or the extraordinary images of him mastering the freakish curved wave Teahupoo off Tahiti: the heaviest wave currently known.

Forget the snide journalistic 'beach bum' cliches and inevitable commercialised context. The big wave riders of Riding Giants are extraordinary men (and women)by any standard: obsessive, courageous and immensely skilled and graceful. Sports come no more 'extreme' than this. OK these guys are rich, but it is clear from RG that if the money stopped tomorrow, they'd still be seeking, with all the fervour of the most devout religious believer, the next breathtakingly beautiful, monstrous mountain of natural hydraulic force to try to race across on on a strip of fibre glass.

The cinematography in this visually stunning film is of course outstanding; given the perilous context, the mere fact of it let alone its absorbing quality. In our image-drenched culture we have become blase and unimpressible by even the most dramatic of live images. We're too image-wise to feel the excitement of what is portrayed: thus the American public now prefer to watch the latest soap than marvel at a Shuttle launch. And so it is with big wave surfing. We have lost a sense of wonder at the quite extraordinary skill, courage and ingenuity of which our species is capable. Something special.

Approach Riding Giants with fresh eyes and you will be astounded at what these men (and women) do, and fascinated at the restless obsession that drives them to do it. The history of surfing from its genesis in Hawaii through to today, is quickly sketched. And we see how they try the new and dangerous techniques necessary to master the massive destructive force of millions of gallons of churning water racing landwards at 35-40 miles an hour; with an impossibly tiny speck of humanity riding it home.

Human interest? Well there is the top Hawaiian surfer who travelled thousands of miles to California to die riding another wave in another place with his closest friends unable to save him. Or the cheeky chubby, white haired, fatherless little kid who wanted to be Hawaiian and latched on to a surfer who showed him how to surf. The boy went round proudly telling everyone about his new dad, and then grew up to become one of the greatest surfers of all time.

This a film about obsession and passion; the thrill of riding along the edge of danger and taking a good long look at what lies beyond. It is, for these men a way of life, their restlessness tempered by the necessity to wait while nature creates a wave that must travel enormous distances across the ocean to meet with them in a few minutes of definitive exhilaration and sense of life. They have learned to be in harmony with the sea in its angriest, most violent moods.

And they never stop. I would not bet against one of these likeable lunatics one day finding a way to ride a tsunami if not into glory then to a cheerful oblivion.

Zettel
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