“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.”
This is the extent of the dialogue
spoken by Robert Redford in J.C Chandor’s nautical nightmare – and it is all uttered as a voice-over
monologue before we even see the protagonist’s face. The rest of the film is virtually silent
except for the sound of the sea (which has never sounded so threatening
onscreen) and the beautiful score by Alexander Ebert.
All
Is Lost is a
feature-length meditation on one man’s ability to overcome the relentless
onslaught of his environment. A nameless
man (Redford) awakens on his yacht in the middle of the Indian Ocean to find
that it has crashed into a stray shipping container. Although mild frustration washes over his
face, he is well prepared for any eventuality so diligently begins to repair the
damage and bail out the water. Yet this
small damage is enough of a hindrance to distract him from the large storm that
is heading his way.
The film then documents all of the
different problems that he must overcome through weather damage, before finally
deciding that his only chance is to sail towards a nearby commercial shipping
lane and try to get help from passing cargo ships.
The film is an even more sparse Cast Away, but without all of the
product placement and faux-existentialism.
The stripping away of all dialogue and backstory from a typical sea-disaster
movie gives the enigma of the man and his boat an urgency that would be
entirely lost if we knew where he from or why he was on his own.
As a parable, the film appears to be a
damning criticism of global capitalism:
A man on his yacht, a symbol of success and greed, suffers a crash (get
it?) and asks for help from other industrial giants but cannot get their
attention so ultimately begins to drown.
Is there a more succinct visual metaphor for the perils of ruthless and
competitive capitalism?
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