This is one that I put off watching
for a long time because it sounded pretty grim. It was billed as a
story of a lone sailor battling the elements and, based on the title,
presumably losing. So I'm going to break my usual rule against
spoilers by saying that all is not necessarily lost. The sailor gets
rescued at the end, although it's possible to interpret the ending as
a dying hallucination, maybe even a metaphor for entering the
afterlife. Director J.C. Chandor has said that audiences are split
roughly 50-50 in terms of which interpretation they choose. He seems
perfectly satisfied with this ambiguity. I found it
thought-provoking, but I think some viewers may feel cheated by an
ambiguous ending, which is why I am giving you fair warning.
Robert Redford plays the sailor, a
grizzled but fit old guy sailing alone in the Indian Ocean. The
story begins with an accident. The sailor wakes up to the sound of a
crash, followed by water gushing into his cabin. Out in the middle
of nowhere, where he should have been perfectly safe, his boat has
crashed into one of those metal shipping containers, which must have
fallen off a cargo ship at some point. There shouldn't be anything
in this section of ocean, but there this container is, gouging a hole
in his boat.
Our sailor sets to work dealing with
the situation, getting his boat separated from the container, then
working to patch the hole, pump out the water, and dry out all his
damaged electronics. With no radio or navigation equipment, however,
he wanders into the path of a massive storm, which ultimately damages
his boat again. He never gives up, but despite his best efforts, the
situation continues to worsen.
Robert Redford is the only actor in
the movie, and he hardly uses his voice at all. I always thought it
must be hard for actors to memorize all those lines, but I think what
Redford does here is much harder, conveying everything through facial
expression and body language.
“All is Lost” deserves the prize
for Most Existentialist Film of 2013. The point of the film is
summed up in a letter the sailor composes for his family, where he
says, “I want you all to know that I fought until the end, if that
matters.” No matter how dire things get, how bad the storm, he
keeps trying, and he even takes a moment to appreciate the beauty
around him. It may not matter how you interpret the ending, because
the point is not the end, but how he comports himself along the way.
The important thing is not how he dies, but how he lived, because
even if the sea doesn't take him, something eventually will, and the
fact is we all have a shipping container waiting for us out there.
4 stars out of 5
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