“All is lost here.” The movie begins with that line… one of
the few uttered in this film. It is a black screen behind the opening voice
over. “Our Man” (the title given to Robert Redford’s sailor in the films
credits – we never learn his actual name) words a letter, to his family maybe, relating
his desperate state… his dwindling rations, his battle to survive, his regret.
Sunlight and noise… we are moved back 8 days in time as Our
Man awakens to the sound of a loud collision. His yacht has struck a stray shipping container and is taking on water. The box’s freight of cheap tennis
shoes bobs in foot-deep water in the cabin. Our Man is alone in the damaged yacht in the Indian Ocean.
Why is he there? Why is he sailing alone? Who is he? What is he? We know none
of these things. We know only that there is a man in a boat far from land and
that the boat has hole in it.
A basic story of man against nature follows. The struggle hits
fairly predictable plot notes – storms, thirst, near-miss rescues. It is writer/director
J.C. Chandor’s minimalist approach to moving through these points that truly
sets this film apart from the common. Elemental sounds – wind, rain, sea - and
a spartan but haunting sound track (from Edward
Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros) fill in where dialogue might have been. We
watch Our Man move wordlessly, pragmatically through the logical, by-the-manual
steps to survival. He is experienced at sea, but not with this type of challenge.
He is practical and realistic and he is whatever else we can deduce from his
labored movements and exhaustive attempts to stay alive. But we really don’t
know this person. The depiction seems like an exercise that uses the main character as a variable… a fine experiment in
story telling to see if such an approach can produce a compelling film. That said, All Is Lost is certainly
more than a curiosity. Chandor’s tactics are effective. The film is intriguing…
even captivating in parts. Yet I watched this hypothesis and proof unfold from afar – more
intellectually engaged than emotionally connected. Chandor’s bold strategy holds
the film apart but also ties it down. It was interesting to watch but I didn’t really care
that much about what happened to Our Man in the end. 7 out of 10.
