For a few months in 1994, Bruce Brown’s Endless Summer II was my favorite film. The film, a sequel to the first installment in 1966, made a profound impression on me, due to its breathtaking cinematography and the sense of boundless adventure in search of the perfect wave. I was 13 years old, so I hadn’t seen many “classics” at that point, and my film knowledge was limited to Blockbuster Video shelves and a strip mall multiplex. In fact, not long after my second or third viewing, I snuck into a screening of Pulp Fiction and, 16 years later, have yet to watch Endless Summer II again. But at the time, the long shots of shorelines and cresting waves were simply transcendent.
Highwater, the second surfing documentary by Brown’s son Dana, shifts the focus from the family’s previous surfing films to depict contest surfing and shed light on the sport’s magnitude in the state of Hawaii. Specifically, it documents the Vans Triple Crown of Surfing (a series of three major events staged on the North Shore of Oahu) while also profiling local residents and the surfing world’s current stars. The film highlights promising amateurs and established pros that were raised on the North Shore to underscore messages about the closeness of the community and their spiritual connection to the ocean. Brown covers each of the Triple Crown events but saves the drama for the finale at Banzai Pipeline, a reef break notorious for massive swells and a high death toll. For disciples, Pipeline is the ultimate surfing thrill, representing both mortality and the power of nature. These quasi-religious metaphors come through clearly in a number of interviews, alluding to something of an ethos: professional surfing isn’t about the money and the glory; it’s about being able to catch the evening glass day after day.
But Highwater is at its best when it showcases the surfers in action. Like his father, Dana has a sharp eye for the movement of waves. With an opening shot that establishes perspective from a surfboard’s point of view, the filmmaker immerses the viewer in the aquatic realm. As advertised, we get to see the greatest surfers in the world in an idyllic setting. Dana shot more than 150 hours of footage and selected some exhilarating heats that run together smoothly. Although he overuses some editing techniques — particularly split screen and slow motion — the results are usually captivating.
What’s missing here, though, is a consistent thread that could offer a fresh perspective or even just a memorable experience. While Dana’s surfing documentary debut, 2003’s Step Into Liquid, was essentially a continuation of his dad’s Endless Summer series, Highwater was really his chance to step out of his father’s long shadow. But there are too many rambling interviews with surfing’s old guard that fail to inform us of anything substantial, and the talk of passion quickly becomes redundant. The director also spends a significant amount of time interviewing professional surfer Pat O’Connell, who retires from competition after the final event. For those who remember O’Connell as one of the leads in Endless Summer II, it’s fun to see him on screen again. But for those who haven’t seen that film, he’s portrayed as just another surfer at the end his career.
Sure, Highwater emphasizes locality and cultural relevance while reaffirming the sport’s professional legitimacy, and it has some truly stunning shots (then again, Hawaiian sunsets and epic rides are pretty safe bets from an aesthetic standpoint). But its spiritual message is clichéd and it glosses over both the sport’s history and its current trends. Taken as a whole, the film just doesn’t add anything new to the “canon” of surfing documentaries, being far too indebted to earlier works to resonate anything substantial. The film may work for the surfing set, but if you’re looking for a primer on modern surfing, you’d do better checking out its forerunners.
