There’s not really much to say about Thicker than Water, Jack Johnson (Yes, the “Bubble Toes” Jack Johnson) and Chris Malloy’s understated documentary about surfing. That’s because there’s not much there. It’s just forty-five minutes long, and most of that forty-five minutes is focused on the surfing. I can’t tell you if the surfing is, I simply don’t know. But the visuals are stunning, despite (or maybe because) looking like home movies.

Thicker than Water is a quiet, understated documentary. Malloy and Johnson prefer to let the waves and, occasionally, the surfers speak for themselves. Most of the speaking is in voice-over, and even in those rare instances where the person speaking is on camera it plays more like eavesdropping than History Channel Roger Mudd exposition. A surfer will tell a short story — about his first board, for example, or how he learned surfing from his parents — and then we’ll see several minutes of surfing, usually in a fairly exotic location. A travelogue without the -logue, scenes in the film were shot in Australia, Indonesia, Ireland, India, and Tahiti, as well as France, Hawaii, and New York, although we’re kind of expected to know this from context. No one tells us where we are.

Overlaid over the surfing and amateur video footage is an excellently scored soundtrack featuring downtempo techno music, mellow acoustic numbers, and frequent mixes of the two. Much of the music has spiritual overtones; the vocals, when present, are frequently chants in some other language and they definitely have a religious feel to them. But this is as close to a spiritual message as the movie gets. No one says something like “When I’m out there on a board, I feel at one with nature,” or any such thing. The stories are brief, intensely personal, and blessedly free of stereotypical hip surfer-speak.

The most extraordinary thing about the movie is what it lacks. There are lots of surfers in this film, and many of them are probably famous athletes. But you don’t see their names until the end. There’s no subtitling or graphics of any sort, and certainly no branding. No one is trying to sell you anything except, possibly, the sport itself. At a time when sports is overwhelmed by fancy whirling CGI, product placement, cute editing techniques, and Wide World of Wrestling hype and noise it’s remarkable to see something go this long with just a camera pointed at a few surfers.

The movie is surely not for everyone; it is, after all, just surfing. And forty-five minutes is probably about the time limit of the material. You’re probably not going to learn anything about the technical aspects of surfing, and you’re certainly not going to learn anything about the history of surfing or the professional sport of surfing. But you are likely to understand the “why” of surfing, even if you can’t put it into words. Not even Jackson and Malloy can put it into words. Their genius was in just turning on the camera, and letting both the film and the waves roll.