FILM: All is Lost, starring Robert Redford

…and only Robert Redford. A survival genre film, it captivated me.  Will he survive?  The irony is warm yet pitiless.  What did Our Man (RR's character, no problem with concluding this the film's existential allegorical intention) do wrong?  Why doesn't his note say he loves someone?  Major Tom did.

Why doesn't he have an emergency beacon on the boat?  Why did the bros in Deliverance canoe down a river without reconnoitering it first? Why doesn't he get out the emergency radio in the lifeboat and try to use it sooner? Why doesn't he know how to make a condenser to get fresh water?  Maybe he forgot, like older people do. 

He tells us, "he tried". An epitaph that may be all we really deserve at the end of our life, truth told baldly.  

Redford is solo sailing in the Indian Ocean when his boat collides in the night with an errant cargo bin full of tennis shoes.  He is old and moves somewhat stiffly but he patches the hole and that's about the last thing that goes his way.

What's most moving to me is that he is able to plot his position on his nautical maps,using the sextant he teaches himself to use from a book, but so what?  He knows where he is, but no one else does and knowing thyself provides no assistance but the ability to choose; the hard truth asserted.

The film's question:  when would I choose to give up and die? Would I be unable to choose, tumbled by waves and fate? Drowning is a terrible death, struggling not to breathe but finally inhaling, body panic struggling with mental directions - don't breathe yet, hold it, keep pushing for the surface... 

He takes a huge risk at film's end, (no spoiler) that's breathtaking and concludes the film with ambiguity. Is he saved? Are you saved? Why or why not? 

I sailed with my husband on a Cal 20 when I was a young woman, battling nausea, wet, cold, damp, and boredom. He loved it so. I'm just home from a gentle dive trip on a fake pirate ship in placid warm Indonesian waters, none of those problems! I loved it so.

I would think that if one had never been to sea, the film offers the poetic reality  almost perfectly.  I was chilled and stunned by the visual beauty of the film.  The musical score was exquisite and haunting, like a far-away sea bird weaving through the clouds.


Is Redford doing an extended method actor's exercise as his craggy face, icy blue eyes, and aging body reveal the range of emotions Our Man experiences? Can't say.  

This spare, unusual film is compelling and fascinating, I am fortunate to see it.