This Week In New York

HIGHWATER

Cameramen do whatever is necessary to capture thrilling surf competition in HIGH WATER

HIGHWATER (Dana Brown, 2008)
Angelika Film Center
18 West Houston St. at Mercer St.
Opens Friday, August 27
212-995-2000
www.vanssurf.com/highwater
www.angelikafilmcenter.com

Surfing is in Dana Brown’s blood. His father, Bruce, was a champion surfer who made such documentaries as SLIPPERY WHEN WET, SURF CRAZY, and the 1966 classic THE ENDLESS SUMMER. The elder Brown revisited that last film in 1994 in THE ENDLESS SUMMER 2, which he cowrote with Dana, who went on to make the exciting STEP INTO LIQUID in 2003. Dana has headed back to the beach for HIGHWATER, bringing along his son, Wes, to continue the family tradition. (Wes serves as associate producer and cowriter and coeditor with his dad.) The film ostensibly follows surfing’s Triple Crown on the North Shore of Hawaii in 2005, but it’s not really about winners and losers; it’s about the life — and, sometimes, the loss of life or limb — of the men and women who hop on surfboards and take on some of the most fearsome and beautiful waves ever seen. Brown, who proves as narrator that he’s never met a cliché he didn’t like, speaks with such champion surfers and up-and-coming stars as Kelly Slater, Sunny Garcia, Pat O’Connell, Rochelle Ballard, Carrissa Moore, and Pancho Sullivan, who talk about their personal relationship with the Seven Mile Miracle (along the North Shore) and their love of the water. The film is somewhat scattershot, giving relatively short shrift to the women and not explaining nearly enough to audiences, most of whom will probably need many more details about how the contests are scored and what the rules are. That said, cinematographer Steve Matzinger and his team of cameramen do a good job of capturing some great rides, risking their own safety to go after the perfect shot, just as the surfers are after the perfect wave. And the subplot involving Brown’s pursuit of the elusive, enigmatic Eric Haas is wonderfully wacky. HIGHWATER primarily preaches to the converted, but it does so with heart, especially when tragedy hits.