This post is a bit different from my usual climbing guides. It is a personal story about the film that has stayed with me the longest, and how it connects to the way I feel about climbing.
The movie that came to mind
Not long ago, my younger sibling, who also climbs, said, “I’m thinking of learning to surf.” One film immediately popped into my head.
It’s the 1991 action classic Point Break (the Korean title is 폭풍 속으로, literally “Into the Storm”), starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze.
I first saw it in 2008, when I was an early-twenties university student. My older brother put it on and told me to watch it with his friends. I haven’t watched it again since then. Now I’m in my late thirties, and it still comes back to me from time to time.
It planted a deep longing for surfing in me. It also made me feel a quiet kinship between surfing and climbing, which I love now.
The story (spoilers ahead)
Here is the rough plot.
A rookie FBI agent (Keanu Reeves) goes undercover to take down a gang of serial bank robbers who commit “perfect crimes.” Along the way he gets close to a group of free-spirited surfer hippies. He then discovers that their leader, Bodhi (Patrick Swayze), is the head of the gang he has been chasing.
His cover is blown during the investigation. Still, he is slowly drawn in by Bodhi’s intense charisma and the group’s free way of life. He has lived by rules and regulations, and now he watches surfers who long for freedom on the waves. He feels confused, but also deeply fascinated.
The highlight is the final scene.
The agent lets the gang slip away, but after a chase he finally finds Bodhi on a beach. A storm said to come only once every 50 years is hitting, bringing the biggest waves anyone could hope for. Bodhi, in handcuffs, makes one last request. He asks to ride just one wave and promises, “I’ll come back.”
Both men know that once Bodhi paddles into those storm waves, he won’t come back alive. But in that moment, life or death isn’t what matters to Bodhi. All that matters is whether he can ride the wave of a lifetime, the best of his life.
The agent respects Bodhi’s pure passion as a surfer. He puts down the identity he has protected as an FBI agent, and the handcuffs of reality too, and lets him go into the waves.
Why it stayed with me
I couldn’t forget Patrick Swayze’s last moments in that film for a very long time.
He had a pure longing and obsession for the thing he loved. Even though it might cost him his life, he jumped into the waves without hesitating.
Maybe I still remember this as my favorite film because I admired the overwhelming purity and passion that I felt I didn’t have myself.
My surfing dream that never happened
Because of this movie, I lived with a romantic dream of surfing throughout my twenties. I even imagined taking a working holiday in Australia (a “워홀,” a working holiday visa) and surfing on the Gold Coast.
But in my twenties I was a real scaredy-cat (쫄보 in Korean). I didn’t have the courage to go on a working holiday alone. I couldn’t even work up the courage to travel alone to the sea at Yangyang, a beach town on Korea’s east coast known for surfing. So I never learned to surf properly.
You could say I just wasn’t desperate enough. But I think back then I didn’t even realize that I could choose what I truly wanted and go after it myself.
From surfing to climbing
I thought surfing would remain only a wistful dream. But over time I somehow settled deeply into climbing.
The more I get absorbed in climbing, the more I’m reminded of the hippie atmosphere in that film. The setting is different, the sea versus the rock, but I feel the same spirit and attitude toward life among climbers that I saw in the surfers on screen.
The surfers in the movie bet their lives on the waves. In the same way, climbers pour their passion into facing themselves in front of the wall.
What I want to do next
A decade has passed (in Korea we say “even rivers and mountains change in ten years”), and I think I’ve moved forward a bit from the passive, timid me of my twenties. Still, I think too much and worry too much, and there are moments when I hesitate.
But recalling my favorite film this time, I made up my mind. From now on, I won’t let the things I want to do end up as regrets, like surfing did.
I may not be able to bet my life on anything. Still, I want to live without turning away from reality, doing my best and loving what I love right where I stand.
Like the characters I admired in that film, I want to live purely and passionately.