Surfwise

I really liked it. It looked really great.. I liked how the story progressed. It was shot really well and, regardless of how stupid it sounds, I think the filmmakers really captured the sun.

What a crazy man attempting to raise his family in a mostly impossible and definitely crazy lifestyle. Clearly not one that could be maintained for longer than the children were children. For all his attempts at not being "attached to the physical world at all" during this time, it was interesting to see how much video footage and photographs they had from this period in their lives. A lot to base a documentary off of.

It was interesting to see his family go from a sort of idyllic sort of family cult lifestyle and transition into this sort of dark days towards the end as everybody went their separate ways. It was also interesting to see the perspective of the children. A lot of the older kids took the point of view of understanding how messed up the lifestyle was growing up and held a lot of animosity for their dad even to this day, but the younger kids, the kids born in the 70s seemed to be of the opinion that the lifestyle wasn't so bad and one of them was even thinking of "treating" his kids to the same kind of lifestyle, except on a boat. It's sort of like the old kids grew up with the truth, but the younger kids didn't have to experience all the bad. They came in during the decline of everything. The were born just as the older kids began wanting out of the lifestyle.

The filmmakers let the family go on the this long video diatribe, speaking with the sons and one daughter about what they missed out on. The fact that they couldn't go to medical school, they couldn't understand making monthly payments, they couldn't adjust and assimilate for a while, and then they come back to Doc, their dad, and he's babbling on and on about how no other child of God's earth got the opportunity that his kids got. "You only take what you need. If you take more than you need, then you're taking something from somebody else."