Seaworthy: A Surfing Film by Nathan Oldfield

Seaworthy is a recent surfing film by Nathan Oldfield that I watched on TV. Oldfield is the creator of Lines From A Poem which I have not yet seen, but heard positive things about.  Right off the bat, I dug the poster.  I know the addage says not to judge a book by it’s cover…but look at it – it’s all pirate-y and awesome.  Avast!  Seaworthy document the whole gamut of wave riding from giant old longboards (like 16 feet giant) to inflatable body boards and everything in between.

I really dug the film.  I liked that it had notable surfers like Rastovich, Tom Wegener, Beau Young and so on, but it was never really about the surfers in the movie.  There were no egos or personalities dominating the film.  Half the time, it is pretty hard to tell who is even surfing.  The viewer must sit back and enjoy the art of surfing in it’s raw form.  And I really like the variety of surfing – noseriding, quad carving, alaia sliding, body surfing… its all in there.  The film is shot, edited and flows quite well.

The only thing that really threw me were some of the songs.  Most were fine but a few cause me to snap out of my surf trance and ask, “What this song all about?”  But that’s really only a personal ascetic kind of thing; the music may strike you as brilliant.  Seaworthy will either sit on the lower end of my high rotation list or at the top of my tier 2 movies.

Definitely worth watching.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nbHWHKA6fs[/youtube]