Step Into Liquid is one of those rare documentaries about a very specific topic that is able to have a strong effect on the viewer whether or not you can relate much to the topic at hand. That is, in fact, one mark of a good documentary. Touching the Void also does this very well. The original Endless Summer was before my time, although I would have seen it if it wasn't so hard to find, since I was so impressed by Endless Summer II, which I saw when I was in high school. Many of the people that appeared in those movies also appear in Step Into Liquid, enhancing the presentation of the camaraderie that develops between surfing friends.
I grew up in southern California, minutes away from the beach, and I've also lived in England, so needless to say I've heard plenty of surfing stereotypes, even just from the fact that I come from California. I never got into surfing much, mostly snorkeling and body-surfing and skim-boarding, but have nevertheless been asked by plenty of Londoners if I make a habit of describing pleasing situations or events with phrases like 'Cowabunga, dude,' or 'Totally tubular,' or if I surf to school.
Yes. Of course I do. Everyone in California surfs to school.
I didn't expect the movie to approach this topic, but I was hugely impressed by the way it told the stories of so many surfers and then summed it all up by saying that 'real surfers don't say 'Dude.' It turns your attention away from the automatic surfer stereotypes (which, as is also explained, were started in large part by movies like Gidget and Fast Times At Ridgemont High) and shows you why those stereotypes are so shallow and misled.
This never really bothered me because I was never the kind of surfer that you think of when you hear these stereotypes or even the word surfer, I was more of a beach bum who was into just about everything else under the sun and on top of the sand except for surfing, mainly because I couldn't afford a surfboard. Step Into Liquid, however, goes to great lengths to show what an intense and moving experience surfing can be, regardless of what the waves are like.
I think that the most important function of the documentary is that it shows how something like surfing can bring people together. We see professional surfers being towed into 50 and 60 foot waves and surfing at suicidal speed, but we also see a man traveling to Vietnam with his teenage son, surfing on everything from sand hills to waves less than a foot high while being followed and venerated by hoards of screeching Vietnamese kids. Then you have a group of guys who go surfing in Scotland, of all places, and bring together kids from northern Scotland with kids from southern Scotland, which are separated almost to the point of being separate countries along religious lines, with Catholics in the north and Protestants in the south (unless it's the other way around).
From a technical standpoint, I was most impressed with the extent of the effect that they were able to achieve through the almost constant use of slow motion (so much for 'no special effects
') and the outstanding musical selection on the soundtrack. As a novice filmmaker myself, I love to see such simple effects as blending slow motion with certain music, because it has such a strong effect and is something that I've used myself dozens of times. This is the kind of movie that makes me want to be a documentary filmmaker.
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