Highwater Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

Highwater Blu-ray Movie Review

Come hell or high water, surfers and surf fans should check out Dana Brown’s latest.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater April 14, 2011

It’s a family affair. Highwater director Dana Brown—who also gave us 2003’s Step Into Liquid—is the son of famed surf movie filmmaker Bruce Brown, who introduced the sport to a wider audience with his 1965 hit The Endless Summer, which followed two beach bums on a globe-spanning, wave-riding adventure. Following in his father’s sandy footsteps, Dana Brown continues to document the ever-evolving surf scene, and it looks like his two daughters will most likely continue the tradition. On the surface, his new film is a chronicle of 2005’s Triple Crown championship on Oahu’s North Shore—the “Mecca of big wave riding”—but the undercurrent of Highwater is about how Hawaii’s close-knit surfing community is a family itself, supporting, protecting, and celebrating one another. Through gorgeous surf footage, a laid-back soundtrack, and interviews with both weather-beaten veteran boarders and fresh-faced up-and-comers, Brown evokes the passion, freedom, and occasional danger of North Shore surf culture.

During the winter months, swells from the upper Pacific converge on Oahu’s fabled North Shore, where 20-foot pipeline waves routinely crash into the island’s coastline. If you’re a serious surfer you end up here eventually, as it’s literally the place where careers are made. Brown, who also narrates the film, calls this the “pilgrimage to the promised land,” describing the stretch of beach between Ka’ena and Kahuka Points as “both paradise lost and paradise found.” He’s hyperbolizing, but you can’t blame him—the North Shore does look like an oceanside Eden, remote, lush, and untamed. The Shore’s surfers would like to keep it that way, but gentrification has already begun, with multi-million-dollar homes springing up along the coast. Vincent “Sunny” Garcia, a six-time Triple Crown-winning local, even hopes for divine intervention: “I pray for another hurricane. I hope it comes through here and tears down all the houses.” There’s a collective, underlying fear that the rural North Shore way of life may disappear for good, replaced by Honolulu-style condos and five-star resorts. Some of the old-timers talk wistfully about when the North Shore was unspoiled territory, a “no man’s land.” But alas, the times, they are a changin’, and the sport of surfing is continually changing with them. There’s now big money to be had in sponsorships and tours, and one of the questions Brown asks is provocative: Is the soulful surf lifestyle cheapened if you make a buck off of it? Unsurprisingly, the pro surfers answer with a resounding “no,” and Highwater shows us why. These are people committing themselves to what they love and getting paid for it. What’s better than that?

The Triple Crown events provide the backdrop, but most of the documentary plays out in a series of profiles of the surf world’s longstanding titans and promising future champions. We meet Mark Healey and Jamie Sterling, two North Shore natives who spent their reckless teenage years skipping school, catching waves, and surfing them into an enormous drainpipe. Chelsea Georgeson, one of the sport’s major female players, discusses the state of the women’s competitive circuit, while an assortment of lifeguards, magazine writers, and longboard legends weigh in on what makes winter on the North Shore so magical. Brown seems intent on paying lip-service to every single surfer who ever coasted the Bonzai Pipeline, and this sometimes leaves Highwater spread thin, too focused on ticking off a checklist of names to go in depth on some of the film’s truly interesting real-life characters, like Jon-Jon Florence, the youngest surfer to ever compete in the Triple Crown. He’s been called “the Tiger Woods of surfing,” and elder boardsmen refer to him prophetically as “the one.” The film’s strangest personality, though, is Eric Haas, an unsponsored “man of mystery” who has been known to surf in a full-on football uniform—complete with helmet—and may be “the greatest unsung big wave rider in the world.” Everybody in the North Shore seems to have an Eric Haas story; he’s a living myth—the surfing version of Bigfoot or Nessie—and Brown actually captures the elusive beast coasting in on an enormous shorebreak at the end of the competition. Afterwards, Haas waves to the camera, says, “that’s enough for today guys,” and walks off into obscurity again.

The darker, dangerous side of the sport is exposed when one of the competitors, 25-year-old Tahitian Malik Joyeux, catches a wave, wipes out, and never surfaces. It takes rescuers fifteen minutes to find his unconscious body—his ankle leash came off, separating him from his board—and by this time it’s too late to resuscitate him. The tragedy illustrates the risk inherent in surfing the North Shore, home to the most demanding, technically challenging waves in the world. A collective sadness dampers the contest, but Joyeux’ funeral service a few days later is a celebratory and spiritual coming-together, as all of his surfing buddies hold hands in a floating circle while a helicopter rains flower petals down on the ocean below. It’s beautiful and serene, a fitting send-off, and then life—and the competition—goes on.

Highwater is perhaps too ambitious for its own good—it attempts to cover the Triple Crown, introduce us to every surfer under the sun, and meditate on the North Shore’s aloha lifestyle—but the film is compulsively watchable, thanks to the main attraction: the beautiful footage that Brown and his cameramen have compiled. Seeing a tiny figure crouched on a 12-foot board beneath the ever-looming crest of a wave is an image that never ceases to amaze, another visual metaphor for mankind’s smallness compared to merciless, untameable Mother Nature.

Highwater Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Like Dana Brown's previous surf documentary, Step Into Liquid, Highwater was shot on both high definition digital video and 16mm, although there's less actual film footage this time around. I prefer the look of the 16mm material—the analog graininess complements the beach bum lifestyle well—but you can't deny that Brown's digital camerawork is stunning. Both mediums make the transition to Blu-ray nicely, with a 1080p/AVC- encoded transfer that's generally rich, toned, and detailed. I say "generally" because there are a few hiccups—extremely weak contrast during some interview scenes, blown out highlights in others—but nothing that takes away from the sun-and-water-drenched experience. Vivid blue skies and warm stretches of sand are in abundance. Underwater shots yield deep aquamarine hues that fade into black. Skin tones, as you'd expect, are uniformly tanned, and there's a lot of bright, sun-bleached blond hair. (I have to say, after a particularly dreary Seattle winter, Highwater got me excited for summer. Never mind the fact that the film was shot in December.) Clarity is strong too for the most part, bringing out the fine texture in nubby beach towels and neoprene wetsuits, the surfers' weather-beaten faces and the foamy curls of the cresting 20-foot waves. There is a small percentage of standard definition footage mixed in, and while you'll notice aliasing, combing, and other SD issues here, these problems never creep into the rest of the film.

Highwater Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Highwater's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track doesn't make as big of a splash as it could've, but this is still a solid documentary mix with plenty of force and presence. The soundtrack dominates here—with surf-ready tunes from Jake Shimabukaro, Switchfoot, Wolfmother, and Rodrigo y Gabriela, amongst others—and the music is frequently spread throughout all channels, giving the surfing sequences some added aural kick. Elsewhere in the rears you'll hear pounding, splashing water, along with occasional impressionistic sound design choices, like panning a surfer's heavy breathing into the space behind your head. From the peacefulness of lazy paddling to the thrashing anxiety of catching a 20-foot breaker, the track's choice of music and selective ambience really does span the spectrum of surf emotions. As all of the interviews are essentially captured "on location," wind and other sounds can—on rare occasions—partially obscure voices, but never to the extent that you can't understand what's being said. The disc includes English SDH and Spanish subtitles, which appear as easy-to-read white lettering inside a black text box.

Highwater Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Between the Extended Interviews (SD, 48:09) and Bonus Surf Footage (SD, 36:48), you essentially have a whole second documentary's worth of bonus material to wade through. The surf footage is just that—unnarrated clips of surfers doing their thing—but the extra interviews are enlightening, especially the session with director Dana Brown, who discusses how the surf scene has changed in the past 30 years. You'll also find a trailer for the film in the "Extras" menu, in 1080p and running two and a half minutes.

Highwater Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Dedicated beach bums will definitely want to add Highwater to their Blu-ray libraries—it's a great companion to Step Into Liquid—but the film will also appeal to couch surfers and work-saddled daydreamers who only wish they could jet off to Hawaii for the big wave season. The film looks and sounds great in high definition, and the disc comes with nearly a second documentary's worth of extra footage, so this is an easy recommendation.