All is Lost – J C. Chandor, 2013
Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity stylises the film’s agoraphobic floating with Sandra Bullocks’s short gripping exhalation, the frequently frantic monologues to exert solitude, but All is Lost has the complete opposite approach. The character, credited as Our Man, expresses few words as his journey slowly turns to the worst. A lone traveller of unknown cause and destination, he wakes up one morning to find a drifting container has smashed into his boat, pierced a large hole.
The next sequences follow him seeing to his boat, improvising a patch for the hole then holding against a raging storm. All the actions are depicted slowly, hinting at his old age in opposition to the forever young and wild sea he has to fight. What an unbalanced clash it is, the man tossed in spirals in his boat, thrown continuously into the roaring waves. Cinematographers, Frank G Demarco and Peter Zuccarini take turn to orchestrate the battle over and under water respectively. The underwater footage comes in as unexpectedly as Our Man’s fall, crisply shown to address a claustrophobic struggle at hand. Above water and in the boat, the tumultuous pace means the camera sometimes turns away too quickly and does not let the audience immerse themselves enough in the character’s fear and solitude.
Yet Robert Redford makes it his mission to carry himself and the viewers along through this doomed voyage. He approaches the predicament with thoughtfulness, calm that is thin enough to let loose the desperation beneath. As the sea takes away the necessities he relies on, Our Man is brought forward by his soul and body, which shine determinedly in the centre of the storm like the central figure in a Renaissance painting. There is no scream, only little of a stutter at the ignorantly disappearing ships, a dry, long curse after two thirds of the film. Robert Redford’s silent, meditative reactions pose questions at our own reactions to stages of danger. His acting holds solid throughout the jump cuts and the humming background music intending to ‘shove’ the fear and confusion of danger into the viewers’ mind. Our Man, at his lowest point of surrender, still stands above the sea as a proud figure of defiance. Even if he sinks he still beams with the victory of holding up to every trial Nature tauntingly puts against him this far.
Soul and body are all the hero has left, but they are also the things the audience cannot escape from. And so we may never lose him, Our Man against the Sea.
Originally published on UEA Concrete 14/01/2014
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