Surge
My natural impulse was to liken Aneil Karia’s “Surge” to “Uncut Gems” in how it encapsulates following a character through moments of anxiety, but the truth is, “Surge” is more complicated than that. There isn’t a direct throughline of a narrative in “Surge” like what the Safdie Brothers created in their film. Karia’s film, which he wrote with Rupert Jones and Rita Kalnejais, is a stripped-down character study in the moment where someone breaks, and just needs to feel alive, regardless of consequences. Once you get locked in to that idea of what the film is, it’ll latch on to you and not let go.
Ben Whishaw plays Joseph, who lives a meandering life as airport security. He doesn’t drive, and his job is such a slog; he’s sick of having to pat down people every day, especially when they have to be strip searched in private. His neighbor is having issues with his motorcycle…or he’s just revving it to be a dick. And when his elderly father picks him up from the airport one day to take him home to help with a chore, his father shows he probably shouldn’t be driving. On that day, he has a breaking point, and runs out of the door, bleeding, beginning a long journey of feeling like anything goes for the first time in his life.
Karia keeps the film resolutely with Joseph’s point-of-view, as we see him go into the city, and his journey starts when he goes to see a friend having issues with her TV. From there, his behavior gets completely unbalanced and reckless, but, he always is focused on the moment. There are characters that occasionally reappear, but this is primarily a one-man show for Whishaw, who gives a singularly sharp performance as a man whose found his point of no return, and will do what he can to enjoy it, not giving into the possibilities of what could happen otherwise. I was reminded of his performance in Tom Tykwer’s “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer,” which also relied on looks and him being able to give us a look at what’s going on with him internally. “Surge” asks a lot of him as a physical performer, and it’s a credit to him that we feel what’s going on in him every moment, even if we don’t understand what compels him to behave the way he does. It’s a fantastic piece of acting from him.
Anything is capable of setting people off into a self-destructive spiral. It doesn’t have to be anything significant or catastrophic, although that’s usually what we associate with such behavior. Sometimes, it can be the tedium of a job, or our co-workers’s discussion, or just the need for rebellion. Karia doesn’t necessarily try to explain the “why,” and just shows us what happens in Joseph’s spiral. By the end, he’s seemed to find some peace, which is all anyone can hope for someone in a moment of emotional crisis, because it means they may have come to understanding about themselves.
