ALL IS LOST
By Gary Murray
Starring Robert Redford
Written and directed by J.C. Chandor
Running time 106 min
MPAA Rating PG-13
Selig Film Rating Matinee
Robert Redford is an icon, a movie star among movie stars. Some of his roles have been Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, The Great Gatsby and my personal favorite The Great Waldo Pepper. He still does about a film every couple of years and his latest is All is Lost.
In the beginning, we hear the worlds that the man writes in a journal, words of hopelessness, proclaiming his desperation. Then the film goes back eight days. A man (a name is never given) is in the Indian Ocean on a one-man sailing trip. He seems to be a competent sea-man but even the best sailor can run into problems.
As the film opens, his cabin is full of water. A shipping crate has fallen off the side of a passing vessel and slammed into his hull. The hull has been breached and he is in trouble.
The man works steadfastly to repair his vessel on the water and pump the excess fluids out of the interior. The water shorts out his electrical system so he must manually get the brackish liquid from his boat. Eventually, he is able to give a makeshift patch to his vessel. It will not make it to the shore but it still floats
He knows that he must get into the shipping lanes in order to be rescued. He plots out his course, guessing where the lane is and how far he must travel. It is a race against time and the elements for survival. The film builds excitement as the man waits for a cargo vessel to notice him.
If Hemmingway were alive today, he would have written All is Lost. It is about man versus nature and man verses himself. This is not a namby-pamby individual but a real man fighting real elements while still trying to keep sane. It is methodical exploration of the step by step process of survival. Much like the writing of Hemmingway, the writing of All is Lost takes a basic step-by-step approach to survival.
Robert Redford gives the performance of a lifetime with All is Lost. The film is almost a silent movie with maybe three sentences spoken in almost two hours. It is all done with slight glances and stoic resolve. We are never given a back story with the character. The film just starts and goes through the mishaps without ever revealing anything about life before our hero set sail. There is no statement of how or why in All is Lost.
Writer/director J.C. Chandor has made a simple film of survival and blended with an introspective silent drama. By using only his camera to tell the tale, the director uses the idea of visual feast rather than talking heads to weave the tale. It is confident film making that shows a skill seldom seen anymore. And the seascapes are frighteningly beautiful
One of my favorite books is The Cocoanut Book by Richard Maynard. The tome is about a man trapped on a desert island. It is not Robinson Crusoe but a harsh reality of isolation and despair. All is Lost follows the same kind of idea. It is not an adventure tale but a story of impossible survival. This is not a film that will be universally accepted and praised but it is a film that is different from 99.9% of what is shown on the silver screen.
All is Lost is one of the most unique cinema experiences of 2013. It should get Robert Redford an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. While not the best film of the year, it has one of the best performances.
