Riding Giants (2004)

The thing that is driven home in this documentary about surfing is that in no way do I get this obsession, but it is just that.
The movie is about altogether another reality. The overarching fact about these surfers is the degree of their obsession. They live to ride, and grow depressed when there are no waves. They haunt the edge of the sea and are like the modern day mariners Melville describes on the first pages of Moby Dick. They seek the rush of those moments when they balance on top of a wave's fury and feel themselves in precarious harmony with the ungovernable force of the ocean. They are cold and tired, battered by waves, thrown against rocks, visited by sharks, held under so long they believe they are drowning -- and over and over, year after year, they go back into the sea to do it again.  From the early surfers of the 1950's, who camped on the beaches of Hawaii for weeks on end, living primitive existences in order to catch the next big wave, to the Laird Hamilton's of today, who take a jet ski to get toed into monster waves to ride, they have the bug and they have it bad.  Really fascinating.