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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 12/15/2013 : 11:09:32
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According to the IMDB he made his first small screen appearance in 1960 on the western series Maverick, and boy has Robert Redford come a long way! I surely watched many of those television series he was in back in the 60s, but I only really started paying attention to his career in 1965 with the release of Inside Daisy Clover, followed soon after by Arthur Penn's brilliant The Chase and This Property Is Condemned.
Yes he was devastatingly handsome enough to make an exception for girls of my generation who preferred their guys - and screen idols - with darker hair.
The focus for any review of JC Candor's man in a boat story must be Redford - his pretty-well flawless performance and the resonance of his character's plight.
He's a man with no name. In the cast list he's called "Our Man" - reminiscent of that colloquial Irish phrase "yer man," but here suggesting a quite universal application. Everyman. All men. Perhaps all mankind.
The film opens on a simple caption locating us some 1500 miles from anywhere in the Sumatran Straits - not exactly familiar territory [though research reveals far more salubrious location shooting]. A flat seascape is voiced over by Redford reading a letter to ... someone, somewhere. No context. As we listen a disconcertingly bizarre floating structure drifts and bobs from left to right, in close-up, until it disappears from the screen.
What the hell was that?!
And apart from that brief narrative voice, for the remainder of the film's 106 minutes, we hear nothing from Redford. Or anyone else. Except for one expletive, and a very few futile calls across the water.
No other words. And no other characters. No one. Nothing. Zilch. Zippo. Nada.
So, it's a one-man show, without even the top and tail that sandwiches Tom Hanks' Castaway. And can Redford hold this film, can he grab your attention as he tries to survive against nature? You betcha!
Like Our Man, we're not in the familiar waters of "based on a true story." Writer/director Chandor is after a far more universal truth than any one person's story. So we're plunged in. Into a scenario we grow to identify with, whether or not we've ever been on a boat of any description.
Just one further caption rooting us in time to the previous week. And there we are on a sail boat, in trouble, with a one-man crew.
Going in we do get a shadow of a glimpse of the man from those opening lines. We understand there's at least someone he cares enough about to share his final thoughts with, and that most of all he's filled with regret at his human failings, though none is ever specified. We also learn he's reached the end of his tether in a hopeless situation. All Is Lost.
Surely, most of us can identify with that. We're trapped in time, trapped in life, trapped in ourselves, awaiting ... what? answers? redemption? salvation? or just an ending of any kind.
As I watched, it was this existential element that kept overtaking all else, although it was fascinating to witness the ingenious minutiae of exactly how one can survive as the precious all-too-limited resources become lost, squandered, or just disappear. And the awareness of threats from the natural world render the pitiful floating shelter into a potential tomb.
So, yes, I did eventually think of Job, and Samuel Beckett, and Camus.
Most of the film's reviews bar one [The New Orleans Times-Picayune] forego that kind of analysis, concentrating instead on the admittedly phenomenal digital editing, cinematography, the sweep and precision of Chandor's direction and, of course, craggy-faced and contained Redford, a redefined kind of hero.
But nothing so much as a single shot convinced me I may not just be watching a simple story of Man Against The [Hemingway-ish] Sea. I'll describe that shot, but it's gone in a blink, so you'll have to really pay attention to catch it. It occurs when Our Man decides, wisely as it turns out, to ditch his damaged boat, and just for a flash, behind his shoulder we can see a fuzzy mound of land. No, it's not the crest of a wave, it's a shoreline. I'd concede it might have been a mirage, but Our Man is looking the other way - so what would be the cinematic point of that?
Now OK, it's probably a mistake. Well, maybe it's a mistake. Maybe all those gazillions of digital-editing dollars weren't able to buy the expertise to erase that shadow of what might be Our Man's refuge. Maybe. Or maybe it's there and only there for a blink, that makes the whole film a metaphor for how, in our journey, we sometimes can't see what's right in front of us.
I dunno. I'm suggesting.
There's a soundtrack, yes - and of all the crits I've read about the film, that element seems the one most in contention. Some complain, too about the ending. For me, it really doesn't matter - as they say in Buddhism "the going is the goal."
Your cine-goal, I suggest, is to see the film.
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randall
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 03/05/2014 : 22:43:51
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The Oscar for sound design was erroneously awarded to GRAVITY, a movie which I loved. This one deserved the statue, since it was as completely manufactured as were the "space" effects, yet hidden among seaborne sounds you'd expect.
Redford and Chandor created pure cinema: they used some trickery, to be sure, but the Academy voters ignored their work IMO. |
Edited by - randall on 03/05/2014 23:33:53 |
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All Is Lost
