Review: All is Lost

by Trevor Kirkendall

★★★½

Every time a survival film comes along, I have to wonder how realistic it portrays the solitude. It’s fun and humorous even to see Tom Hanks dancing around a campfire in “Cast Away”, but is the reaction we should expect from someone who has just figured our their utterly lost? “All is Lost” is the latest to take on the survival story, but it addresses the solitude idea a little differently: this is a film with next to no dialogue and only one character.

Robert Redford is credited in “All is Lost” as Our Man. He is the only person in this entire movie. The film opens with a voice over courtesy of Redford that sounds like a goodbye note to someone, which eerily sets up the events that follow. Eight days earlier, we see our man waking up on his sailboat in the middle of the Indian Ocean. A shipping container floating in the water has damaged his boat.

He repairs the boat, but his radio equipment had been flooded leaving him with no one to call for help. And if things couldn’t get any worse, a storm pops up which tosses his boat throughout the waves. His boat is badly damaged, so much that he had to abandon it in favor of a life raft.

On the surface, “All is Lost” appears to be overly simplistic. There is only one person in the entire film, Redford, and there is very little dialogue. Outside of the opening voiceover, Redford probably only has two lines of dialogue. With so little going on, the film has a lot of potential to be a very boring 106 minute movie.

But it’s not boring at all. The film is paced so well that it feels much shorter than it is. The screenplay, written by director J.C. Chandor, relies solely on situational elements to keep the pace alive. And each of these situations creates moments of genuine intensity. Chandor doesn’t utilize typical scare tactics to levitate you from your seat. He’s able to dial up the intensity simply by putting Redford into one life-or-death situation after another.

I did have a hard time feeling for this character at first. As someone who would never be in this situation, I can’t feel sorry for him. He’s in the middle of the Indian Ocean on a sailboat that shouldn’t be that far out to sea. Not to mention, he didn’t really seem to know what he was doing. And since the movie just begins with no real setup, I didn’t know who I was supposed to be rooting for.

But then I realized that’s the point. Without any backstory, Chandor has allowed the audience to come up with their ideas of who this man is or where he comes from. For example, I noticed that he seemed a little in over his head at times. Perhaps he’s the cocky guy in the yacht club who thought he knew everything there is to know about boats. The more experienced sailors probably tried to talk him out of this excursion, but he didn’t listen.

There are so many questions that you can ask about this man and it’s entirely up to you to come up with the answers. What prompted him to take this trip? Why’s he in the Indian Ocean and not something a little more close to America (when he does speak, he speaks with an American accent so we know he’s from the USA at least)? What type of family does he have? Is he married? He’s wearing a ring on his left hand but it doesn’t really look like a wedding ring, does it?

Credit the costume and art departments for bringing out those questions. There a little things hiding out in the background that elude to who exactly this man might be in his everyday life. Chandor doesn’t dwell on any of it, but its up to the watchful eye of the audience to catch them.

Redford is sensational in this role. This is essentially a silent film for him. He speaks very little, only to himself or into a radio. And with no backstory built into the script, it was all up to Redford to create all the history and motivations on his own. I can’t imagine how much of a challenge that must be for an actor. Redford never seems to disappoint. Even if the movie he’s in is a bit of a misstep, Redford is always the one bright spot. He’s delivered many fine performances in his career and this one will go down as one of his best.

“All is Lost” won’t be for everybody. I can certainly see where some people might find the lack of dialogue a bit of a bore. But if you allow yourself to be creative as you watch it, there’s a lot you’ll be able to get out of it. Outside of that, it’s got a brilliant screenplay, its beautifully shot (both above and underwater) and its masterfully acted by its singular star. If you can accept this film as a silent film and let Redford’s performance coupled with whatever your imagination can concoct, there’s plenty to like here.