Skateboarder-turned-director Stacy Peralta scored an auspicious breakthrough with Dogtown And Z-Boys, a wildly entertaining documentary about the rise of skateboard culture. Now comes a companion film of sorts, Riding Giants, Peralta's loving homage to skateboarding's water-bound sister sport of surfing. Edited and filmed with the same kinetic, percussive sense of rhythm and movement as its predecessor, Riding Giants chronicles, in roughly chronological order, the development of big-wave surfing in the U.S., from its Hawaiian origins to its evolution into a California phenomenon. Peralta talks to the sport's legends, details technical innovations, and documents the discovery of ideal surf spots, but mostly, he lets astounding surfing footage carry the movie.
At its best, surfing inspires awe at the grace of athletes who tame monster waves, testing the limits of physical endurance while performing a duet with nature. It's almost too visually exciting; filmmakers tend to get so carried away by their footage that they forget about piddling concerns like cohesion, structure, and strong narratives. Peralta is no exception. Fans hoping for surfing's answer to Dogtown And Z-Boys will be disappointed to learn that Riding Giants isn't anywhere near as focused as his previous film.
The newer movie devotes its concluding segment to Laird Hamilton, a revolutionary big-wave rider who looks like the result of a scientific experiment to breed the perfect surfer, and whose accomplishments make Jesus' walking-on-water miracle seem like so much frenzied dog-paddling by comparison. Hamilton is breathlessly described as the greatest surfer in the world, the Michael Jordan of water sports, the alpha and omega and everything in between. And, in a twist that resurrects Dogtown And Z-Boys' odor of narcissism, Hamilton is also a producer on the film, which makes it feel a little like an epic act of self-gratification. Or, to borrow Riding Giants' hyperbolic parlance, the most amazing, perfect, influential act of masturbation ever committed, one that irrevocably changed self-gratification forever.
That suspect element aside, Riding Giants' shameless adoration of the kind of people who devote their lives to the existential pursuit of the perfect wave—and who use the word "gnarly" without a trace of irony—makes it hard to dislike. It's a film hopelessly in thrall to the thrill of big-wave surfing, and for all its rambling shapelessness, it conveys that excitement in an infectious, conspiratorial manner.