This is about youth and the sweet-bitter memories of a man, John Milius, that with Big Wednesday wide opened his heart to the public, touching down. Milius puts together many little truths that become a concentrate of life-lessons. The director found the perfect actors for the parts (not top actors, "simply" the right ones), wrote a perfect story, introduced a moving soundtrack. He draw the "sense" of youth inner life, with the fully emotional but logical understanding of an experienced man looking and feeling back the boy he was. A gentle touch, a lot of magnificent surf sequences, that's poetry in motion. This is also a film about Friendship. Close friends, that's what we need when we begin to be scared of life. Character Bear says something like "you need friends when you are in trouble". Who is more in trouble than a teenager? So this movie makes one feel strongly close to the characters, part of a growth process that is basically the same for boys and girls on this planet, despite generations, social conditions, culture or intellect. This is to me the proof that Big Wednesday was and still is a masterpiece.
Regards, Massimo