ALL IS LOST B+
USA (106 mi) 2013
‘Scope d: J.C. Chandor Official site
Thirteenth of July,
4:15 PM, I’m sorry. I know that means
little at this point, but I am. I tried.
I think you would all agree that I
tried. To be true, to be strong, to be
kind, to love, to be right. But I
wasn't. All is lost here—except soul and
body, or what’s left of them, and a half-day’s rations. I’m sorry.
—Our Man (Robert Redford)
Of interest, director J.C. Chandor is the only one of a
throng of Sundance participants since 1978 to ever ask the festival founder,
Robert Redford (age 77), if he’d ever star in a Sundance film, which he gladly
agrees to do here. And that choice makes
all the difference, as you don’t see anybody else in the entire movie, an old
man and the sea adventure with just Redford (listed in the credits as Our Man),
the boat, and the sea. There’s a brief
opening diary entry that the old man recites, but other than a single word outpouring
of frustration, which points the way to the inevitable, there is no dialogue
either. The script is only 31-pages
long, and Redford was impressed with the detail of specifics. Essentially a one-man survival tale, the film
interestingly provides no backstory whatsoever, offering no reference to who
he’s speaking to in the opening narration, who he is, what skills he has as a
sailor, or why he’s out there alone in the middle of the Indian Ocean in the
first place on a 39-foot yacht called the Virginia
Jean, some 1700 miles from the nearest land. In the darkness, he wakes to discover water
leaking into his sleeping quarters, only to find a gaping hole in the ship’s
hull caused by ramming into the side of a floating shipping container that
apparently fell overboard. The inside
flood of water into the cabin destroys the electronic equipment used to
navigate the ship as well as pump the water from the boat. Displaying undue calm, he’s able to detach the
yacht by cleverly hoisting his anchor and placing it on the other side of the
container, and begin the meticulous process of repairing his ship.
This opening round of assaults is just the beginning, as he
quickly patches the hole with homemade glue and pumps out the water by hand
until tiring from exhaustion. As he sets
his sights on the horizon, another storm is approaching. After a few brief minutes, he’s lost his
radio signal, so there’s no way to send an S.O.S. While he appears alert and clear-headed, he
makes the best decisions he can, under the circumstances, though the next round
actually overturns his vessel, breaking the mast, where the side is leaking
again. Thrown about the cabin like a rag
doll, he’s knocked unconscious by the severity of the ship’s sudden movements,
awaking to water already as high as his bed.
Redford is seen constantly in motion, never sitting still, going through
a series of deliberate procedures in an attempt to stabilize the boat as best
he can, but the groans of the ship still at the mercy of the undulating waves
suggest there is little time left. He
prepares a life raft and a survival kit, briefly taking what he can carry from
the waterlogged cabin, and after surviving through the night, watches his
vessel slowly sink into the sea.
Floating in the life raft, he studies what he has left, which includes a
sextant and a map, where he calculates his position and discovers he’s nearing
a shipping lane, which is his best chance for flagging down a passing
ship. But when he taps into his
emergency water reserve, one of the plugs accidentally opened, leaving nothing
but seawater to drink. He devises a plan
to place a cellophane sheet across a cut out container, collecting moisture
through condensation, but the amount of water collected is far too little.
The director doesn’t utilize any experimental or avant-garde
aesthetics, and sticks to old-fashioned cinema, allowing the camera to tell the
story, where it’s not exactly a silent film, as sound permeates throughout,
giving the viewer a feel for atmospheric conditions, as it only grows quiet
during the calm. The film is largely a
showcase for his ingenuity, as he has managed to keep himself alive under the
harshest conditions, keeping his wits about him, never panicking, maintaining
his composure. During the quiet moments,
Redford studies an old book, Celestial
Navigation for Yachtsmen, helping him use the sextant, noting he is
venturing into the shipping lanes, keeping his eyes peeled for help. When he finally spots a ship, how ironic that
it turns out to be the cargo ship MV
Maersk Alabama, perhaps the exact same vessel used in Captain
Phillips (2013), as it looks identical.
He signals them with emergency flares, and amazingly they pass close by,
but they keep on going, leaving him in abject despair. Another vessel awakes him in the night, where
he again lights flares, but to no avail, where the tone of the film shifts from
continually doing something about it, to there’s nothing left to do. Redford is suffering from thirst, hunger, and
exposure, and when he finally stops moving around, sitting alone and dejected,
we see his fate etched upon his face.
It’s in these final solitary moments that Redford is most impressive,
where he’s worth his weight in gold, as his entire life feels like a weight
upon his shoulders, becoming a hushed poem of unending anguish, where the
solemn orchestral music by Alex Ebert very much resembles Arvo Pärt’s remarkable
Spiegel im Spiegel in Gus van Sant’s
equally tragic GERRY (2002), Intro - Gerry - Gus Van Sant
- YouTube (5:21). An ultimately
moving experience, one must note that Redford did all his own water stunts
while carrying the entire film on his own, all underplayed in a minimalist
style, where only what’s essential is revealed.
