Documentary: Surfing at the edges of the real world

The emphasis in "Surfwise," an unconventional documentary about a dysfunctional family, is meant to be on the "wise." It is a film that is full of contradictions, each of which comes just in time to keep us guessing.

When we're ready to write it off as another preachy, "poetic" film about the mystique of surfing, it turns dark and suggests that escaping the responsibilities of civilization may, after all, have consequences.

Just when we thought it was going to be another "Into the Wild," asking us to sympathize with those who run away, we are shaken by the dark side. Is this paradise lost or paradise never found? Or, perhaps, fantasy concocted?

At the center, always, is Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz, a man who gave up a successful medical practice to roam the shoreline as a surfer, accompanied by his Mexican American wife, Juliette, and a brood that swells to nine. The children do not attend school, but Paskowitz says knowledge is more important than education.

The 11 of them live in a 24-foot camper. He has no mortgage and no bank payment. He dictates that everyone exercise and eat "healthy" food, and demands that his family imitate the apes (not eating apple peelings, etc.). According to Paskowitz, if we all imitated animals, we'd be healthy and there would be no wars. He seems to think this is a novel, new philosophy.

The children grow up to become surfing champions but, increasingly, become alienated from their dictatorial father. They are forced to listen nightly to their parents having sex. Paskowitz, who does most of the on-camera talking, maintains it's better than abuse, but we learn that he beats the children. We're told he encourages one brother to choke another as punishment for a family transgression. At the same time this father is losing his children, he's losing us. In the process, though, we're experiencing a surprisingly complex film.

Director Doug Pray is often too obvious about staging scenes, such as Paskowitz's frequent, quite gratuitous sex talk and a lame final "reunion" of the estranged family. Paskowitz insists that America is falling apart because most people are not having good sex. He says he was naive as a young man and began taking notes and making studies of his sexual adventures. His wife, who is always pregnant, encourages the children to always say "thank you" to sexual partners.

They claim Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" as their Bible. In a shamelessly tacked on scene, Paskowitz goes to the Simon Wiesenthal Center to bemoan the fact that he did nothing during the Holocaust - a lament that seems too sudden and abrupt for one who comes off as so selfish.

Paskowitz believes that God is a square peg in a square space, but he doubts such perfection exists.

Contradictions are everywhere. As the family hails its freedom and Bohemian lifestyle, we learn that its surf camp is a financial success (until the clan is thrown off public lands). Paskowitz says he gave the children "love and togetherness," but they suffer because they are ill prepared for life outside the family circle.

In the end, the real world wins, but isn't that the way it usually is? Was Paskowitz's flight an act of freedom and defiance, or a cowardly escape that he forced on his family?

The questions it raises fuel this compelling, if somewhat contrived, documentary.

Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347, mal.vincent@pilotonline.com.