Man vs. Ocean Part 4

There have been a bunch of man vs. ocean movies lately: Life of Pi, Kon-Tiki, The Deep. And now comes J.C. Chandor's All Is Lost, about a man on a small yacht (39 feet, says the Wikipedia page) who accidentally loses power and begins to take on water after crashing into an abandoned shipping container (apparently filled with children's shoes). From there our man is alone in the ocean with little hope of rescue.

Mr. Redford as Our Man

All Is Lost is different from the other movies I mentioned – and indeed unique for this year – in that it has only one character. Robert Redford anchors the movie: is its only character, its only voice. And being alone in the ocean trying to survive he says very little. The fact that he is the only character means we know almost nothing about him.

Who is this man?
Why is he alone?

Who was his family?
To whom would he return?
What does he do for a living?
How long has he been sailing?
What is he doing in the Indian Ocean?

When he writes a letter of goodbye, to whom is he writing?
For what is he apologizing?

In this way, All Is Lost is a mystery as much as it is an adventure story. Because we know nothing about our man, we search his face, his possessions, his every action for answers. Our man, though, is a survivor. That's what he is. Chandor doesn't give us backstory. If our man thinks about his life, his regrets, his loves, we know nothing of it. We see only his face and the things that he does to try to stay afloat, alive, and healthy.

If this is valuable as a kind of pure, ascetic filmmaking (and I think it is), it has its drawbacks, too. The reason I liked Kon-Tiki is because it is about teamwork and sticking it out and dealing with other people in confined spaces. One of the reasons I loved The Deep so much, is that it is a meditation on death and on managing things of which we do not know we are capable. The Deep is also fundamentally about losing other people, about coping with that loss, about getting back to something.  

All Is Lost is about staying alive and nothing else, survival tout court. As I say, this is an awesome, unique way of approaching such a story, but I couldn't identify with our man as much as I would've liked. I wanted to know what he was thinking about. I wanted to be alone with him, the way I was alone with Sandra Bullock in Gravity, the way I was alone with Ólafur Darri Ólafsson in The Deep.

I will say that I like this J.C. Chandor's stuff. I liked Margin Call and I liked this. He has a kind of cinematic austerity and clarity that I really enjoy. I look forward to his next picture.

Gravity

You probably don't need me to convince you to go see Gravity. But, it is great. Cuarón is doing his signature long takes. There's all sort of weightless, awesome tension. Clooney and Bullock are great. And I don't know how they are selling this movie in your town, but Gravity is an action movie. An action movie that is also intensely suspenseful. It also contains themes of hanging on and letting go, evolution, becoming someone new, and the power of willing oneself into action: trying. But the star here is the action itself. Gravity is not some heavy-handed message-y action film à la Prometheus.

The sound is great, Emmanuel Lubezki's photography is stellar as always. The special effects are insanely good. And the whole thing is pretty terrifying. I saw it in 3D IMAX and I kind of want to see it again in exactly the same way.

I have lately been drawn to these one-lonely-person-against-nature kinds of stories. I recently loved the Icelandic film The Deep, as well, which involves one lonely guy swimming in the North Atlantic for six hours as he tries to get back home. (How anyone could stay alive in that freezing-cold water is a still-unsolved mystery, but it is a true story.)  Perhaps it is my own introversion that makes a film about someone by herself battling against her own will and spending time with her own memories and pain and fighting to stay alive that appeals to me. I tend to like a film like this much, much more than, say Life of Pi or even Kon-Tiki, which I liked so much. Just this one person, alone, trying to make a go of it, and not knowing whether anyone else cares and knowing for a fact that nature itself does not care. This appeals to me as a narrative. I recognize something in the struggle of my own life, something that makes a kind of sense to me – trying to make things work without really knowing why I am bothering... but doing it anyway.

P.S. in regard to Gravity and its Oscar chances, I think we're looking at 7 total – maybe more. Picture, Director, Actress, Cinematography, Visual Effects, Sound Mixing, and Sound Editing, at least.