Riding Giants (DVD)

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Loved it
How does it compare to similar films?	Outstanding

Advantages:	Straightforward and engaging
Disadvantages:	None

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

The number of films which popularise sub-cultures are legion: Elliot and the gang rode BMXs in ET; Harry Potter lead to a surge in boarding school applications; and Indiana Jones made archaeology sexy. But Stacy Peralta has done more than most. Dogtown and the Z-Boys was a superb look into skateboarding genesis (and was notably a pet subject, Peralta being the first skateboarder to land a major sponsorship deal) and Peralta has now followed that up with a brief history of surfing - or more accurately big wave surfing.

The film is split into 3 separate sections, concentrating on different surges in popularity of big wave surfing.

We begin in the 50s with the true pioneers who made an art form out of being beach bums. Migrating to Hawaii where the truly big waves were, these guys lived a life of total anti-establishmentarianism. Teachers and parents couldn't understand what was happening as guys dropped out of the basketball team to pursue something which didn't actually have a specific end-point or reason.

But that was the whole point.

Chief amongst the vanguard was Greg Noll, a thick-set guy who looks totally at home in the 50s, and was generally regarded as the best big wave surfer of his time (and also something of a businessman as he set up his own surfboard factory and outlets). The original footage is typically 50s grainy, backed up with numerous photos of their exploits. And what comes over most is that this was just a gang out to have fun (and who, incidentally, hated Hollywood latching onto surfing and making it all seem sweetness and light with girlfriends on shore worried about their loved one wiping out).

Moving onto the 70s there is an explosion of surfing in continental US as some big waves make an appearance at California. Jeff Clark had been riding these waves for 15 years on his own until he finally persuaded a couple of others to join him, and suddenly the area (known as Mavericks) became huge. Until then it hd been thought that all the big waves were in Hawaii and couldn't be matched - but at Mavericks they were matched, and in some cases beaten.

Bringing us up to date we meet the man most people describe as the best big wave surfer ever, Laird Hamilton, and we come back to Hawaii where Laird and a few others pioneered a new kind of surfing where you are towed-in to the wave so you can get up to speed more easily. This suddenly makes the biggest waves accessible, and also paves the way for smaller boards (a third smaller than the standard big wave board) meaning you are more manoeverable and faster.

Of course surfing carries with it certain risks, and these are not glossed over as we hear of the deaths of Mark Foo, a noted Hawaiian big wave surfer, on only his second drop-in at Mavericks, and a litany of other big names. And this is what makes this film work. It isn't a rose-tinted view, you have guys admitting in a straight to camera style that they thought they were going to die at certain instances and the scenes of people wiping out on 30 foot waves are more incredible than watching them ride out of the spray.

That is, until the last big wave is shown. Not actually as big as some Hawaiian waves, Laird Hamilton travelled to French Polynesia to ride a famous wave that is simply immense in the amount of water it is displacing and the force with which it strikes down. The footage at first passes you by as Hamilton enters and exits pipeline. But then the scale of his achievement is explained as the footage is shown four or five times, and you realise that he just rode a wave that probably no-one else could have ridden, and rode it in a way that no-one else would have been capable of.

From the grainy 50s footage, to the subdued 70s and 80s colours of Mavericks with its grey, much colder waters, through to the up-to-date bright colours of modern camera-work on Laird Hamilton, this documentary can only be described as enthralling. I actually left the cinema when I saw this movie a few years ago feeling elation.... And a deep desire to learn how to surf.