BIG WEDNESDAY
A film review by Shane R. Burridge
Copyright 1997 Shane R. Burridge
Big Wednesday (1978) 120m.
John Milius' cult favorite is awash with his usual buddy-bonding and rites of manhood, but presents us with characters that are more engaging and sympathetic than those in several of his other works. Story looks at four episodes in the lives of a trio of friends over a period of twelve years. Jan-Michael Vincent, William Katt, and Gary Busey are believable as a group of L.A. surfers who grow up through the sixties and witness the changes in each others lives. As you would expect from a Milius film, the men take center stage while their lovers (Patti D'Arbanville and Lee Purcell) are merely bit players, relegated to responding to each of the surfers' successes, failures, and desires. But what are wives and girlfriends compared to your friends, who will stick with you - as surfboard craftsman Bear puts it - through hell (Vietnam) or high water (the seasonal swells).
Milius plays off masculine iconography (beer, fistfights, cars, guns, surfing, war, stripshows) against Bruce Surtees' subdued photography and Basil Pouledouris' pensive musical score. For this reason I believe BIG WEDNESDAY imparts quintessential elements of the male psyche more persuasively than Milius' other gung-ho action pictures. Also, it's a pleasant surprise to see him siding with characters who are dedicated draft-dodgers. Final episode of film, which should be seen in a cinema for best effect, has a big, mythic feel to it. Of course Milius, a former lifeguard and surfer himself, has been aiming for this all along: Jan-Michael Vincent's character is the archetypal Legend in His Own Time, a latter-day Beowulf contesting the fury of the deep; he and his friends enter their patch of the beach by a ruined stairway that looks like the remains of an ancient temple; Vincent's surfboard is passed on to him (in the manner of a sword or any other powerful token) by a master craftsman who has foretold the 'Big Day' when it must be used; the three friends paddle into the roaring ocean to brass fanfares, as if they were entering a joust. Was it any surprise that Milius would go on to direct CONAN THE BARBARIAN after this? Well-made film has the power to appeal to both surfers and film buffs.
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