This is visually a very beautiful film, it is about a wonderfully talented and rather handsome young surfer, Clay Marzo, who has mastered the ocean. His area of expertise is the sea where there are no boundaries, no nonsensical rules and no strait jacketing regulations. In the sea there is no one else, he is stress free and can just focus on what comes naturally to him.
I found his mastery of the elements absolutely bewitching, he seems able to do the impossible and almost becomes part of the waves. I could happily watch this film repeatedly with my own choice of music and gently slip into a happy place.
Tony Attwood says a few sage words explaining that other people are the disabling factor and if people with Aspergers were allowed to follow their interests how much happier they would be. As soon as our surfer hits dry land, however, he loses his grace and skill as he is now in a foreign land whose culture he will never understand or habituate to, so his stress levels rise and he can't cope. It seems a pity he is not able to concentrate on his surfing - that the media have to intervene and disrupt his enjoyment. He is brusque, socially unrefined and eats like a pig! His fellow surfers make observations about him often demonstrating a heartening acceptance and even on occasion an understanding of him. One surfer intelligently observed that Clay just lives his life with absolute honesty and as the rest of us secretly want to live. We are constrained by a social side which stops us acting openly for our own self-interests. When he is given the environment that suits him he is not in the least bit disabled. Sitting in his home town amongst his friends close to his beloved ocean he appears relaxed and able.
I was left musing how much better the world could be if we were all allowed to concentrate on doing what we love and are naturally good at.
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