by Brett Parker
All is Lost has to be one of the purest man vs. nature films ever made simply because that’s all there really is to it: man and nature. There’s no supporting characters, no cutaways to multiple locations, no flashbacks, no backstory, or no spoken dialogue (except for a voice-over reading a devastating letter), just a quiet man alone on a boat in the middle of the ocean trying to stay alive once everything goes wrong. That may sound like something of a gamble, but All is Lost proves that stripping a literal ocean of cliches away from a survival tale can be quite riveting.
The film opens with an unnamed Man (Robert Redford) alone on a boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The boat accidentally collides with a lost shipping container adrift in the ocean, ripping a hole in the hull. The Man uses all the tools he can to patch up the hole, but these efforts prove to be useless once the boat wanders into a violent storm that eventually sinks the vessel completely. This pushes the Man further out into the dangers of the ocean, armed with only an inflatable life raft and a small emergency kit. As he fends off hunger, sharks, and more stormy weather, The Man tries to develop some kind of makeshift strategy to get himself through his increasingly disastrous situation.
After making his feature length debut with Margin Call, All is Lost further shows writer/director J.C. Chandor’s taste for tales where men are stripped of everything they find important. Yet while Margin Call showed characters giving into dread in the face of a financial collapse, All is Lost proves to be more uplifting by showing a character’s unrelenting fight to live in the face of certain death. By giving obsessive focus to the simple yet intelligent tactics needed to stay afloat and alive at sea, Chandor is able to show the human will in its barest essence to highlight the strong perseverance that can be evoked in all of us against monumentally traumatizing odds. Since a lot of moviegoers today can relate to losing things of great value and being knocked down to very taxing circumstances, they’ll especially find special resonance in this impossible survival tale (which would also help to explain the recently strong box office performance of Gravity, outside of its special effects). That’s why a sailor’s level-headed strategy to overcome the ocean’s unforgiving conditions told in bare-bones form turns out to be way more entertaining that you’d initially suspect.
Robert Redford has certainly solidified himself as a Hollywood legend not only because of his matinee idol looks and efforts as an Americana auteur, but also for his internal army of simple acting gifts that one could easily blink-and-miss. He’s proven to be a master of subtlety, getting more economy from controlled restraint than some of his more melodramatic counterparts, and he can display a rugged resourcefulness in adventurous situations. Here these two ideals get the workout of their lives since Redford is completely isolated and plunked into one of his deadliest cinematic scenarios yet. Since there’s no one to play off of, his performance has to rely solely on the steeliness of his actions and the aching look of impending agony in his eyes. And since his character has no real backstory (or even a name), all we have to go on is his primal human need to survive, which Redford delivers with piercing feeling. This performance is a master class in physical acting.
An interesting aside in Michael Feeney Callan’s biography of Redford suggests that most of his films could be seen as romances in which Redford is the romantic hero and Nature itself is “the girl.” In that sense, All is Lost could be one of those relationship dramas in which a long-standing couple reach their breaking-point and test each other to see if they can keep going on together. As a couple, Redford and Nature have certainly had their ups-and-downs over the years, but now Nature is fed up and dishing out all it’s capable of while Redford responds like a good husband fighting to keep things (literally) afloat. These kinds of films usually end with the main couple staying together or completely dissolving, yet Chandor leaves it up to the audience to decide if Redford and Nature work things out or part ways permanently. Considering everything we’ve ever learned about Redford and the Human Spirit in general, I’m optimistic that things ended on a happy note.
