Where I grew up on the east coast of South Africa, surfing was a pretty big deal and Big Wednesday was often mentioned by the many surfer freaks that went to my high school. But this is not a surfing movie.
Surfing is just a backdrop to the real story - the transience of time and in particular, the golden days of youth.
What the film is really about, and what elevates it to a much higher level, is how time just slips away. What I believe Milius attempted to do with BW was to capture the magnificence of a certain time in HIS life when everything just hung together beautifully, suspended for what seems like forever.
And like so many great pieces of art, in the process he made something that contains a universal truth -- that everyone longs for the intensity of their youth -- and I believe that holds the key to its enduring appeal.
For many people this magical stretching of time is most profoundly felt when they are young, say around 18 or 19 years old. Which is the age the main cast happens to be. They are young, restless and facing a very uncertain future due to the Vietnam War.
For these reasons they do their best to prolong the magic of that particular time and place for as long as possible.
Now this theme has been the subject of countless movies, but few have created them with as much humour and sheer truthfulness as Big Wednesday. Even though the principal cast members, like Jan Michael Vincent and Gary Busey, never really went on to do anything major (although Gary created any number of memorable character roles) in THIS movie they just work together beautifully.
If you've ever seen another film which attempts to create the same mood as this, by the name of Fandango, you might understand what I'm getting at. Fandango has everything that BW has - the humour, the ensemble cast, the looming Vietnam War - but it doesn't capture the magic as well as BW.
Why this is exactly is hard to say because Fandango is pretty darn good in itself. But BW just creates such a sublime portrait of those mad times in your life... expressing sentiments and a yearning that are near impossible to put into words. It's a true cult classic, yet if anything, still underappreciated.
And yeah, the surfing is pretty good too.
Surfing is just a backdrop to the real story - the transience of time and in particular, the golden days of youth.
What the film is really about, and what elevates it to a much higher level, is how time just slips away. What I believe Milius attempted to do with BW was to capture the magnificence of a certain time in HIS life when everything just hung together beautifully, suspended for what seems like forever.
And like so many great pieces of art, in the process he made something that contains a universal truth -- that everyone longs for the intensity of their youth -- and I believe that holds the key to its enduring appeal.
For many people this magical stretching of time is most profoundly felt when they are young, say around 18 or 19 years old. Which is the age the main cast happens to be. They are young, restless and facing a very uncertain future due to the Vietnam War.
For these reasons they do their best to prolong the magic of that particular time and place for as long as possible.
Now this theme has been the subject of countless movies, but few have created them with as much humour and sheer truthfulness as Big Wednesday. Even though the principal cast members, like Jan Michael Vincent and Gary Busey, never really went on to do anything major (although Gary created any number of memorable character roles) in THIS movie they just work together beautifully.
If you've ever seen another film which attempts to create the same mood as this, by the name of Fandango, you might understand what I'm getting at. Fandango has everything that BW has - the humour, the ensemble cast, the looming Vietnam War - but it doesn't capture the magic as well as BW.
Why this is exactly is hard to say because Fandango is pretty darn good in itself. But BW just creates such a sublime portrait of those mad times in your life... expressing sentiments and a yearning that are near impossible to put into words. It's a true cult classic, yet if anything, still underappreciated.
And yeah, the surfing is pretty good too.