Cast Away

What happens to a man when he is suddenly separated from everything? Cut off from his girlfriend, his job, his family, cut off completely from any human contact how does he react? That is the central question behind this movie. Tom Hanks gets the thankless task of trying to answer these questions, largely without any supporting cast.

He plays Chuck Nolan, a FedEx employee in charge of making sure that deliveries occur quickly and smoothly. The very nature of his job demands that he be fixated on time, constantly fretting over every tick of the clock. He has a lovely girlfriend Kelly (Helen Hunt) who somehow puts up with his constant absence due to work.

On Christmas Eve Chuck gets called away to a problem in Malaysia. He has to pack up and leave Nashville on a moment's notice and leave Kelly behind. They quickly exchange presents, she giving him a beautiful gold pocket watch with her picture in it and he giving her a small box indicating a big question to follow. He tells her to wait until New Year's to open it and then boards the plane.

The flight is a rough one and the pilots have to divert around a massive storm which cuts off their communications. The storm gets rapidly worse forcing the passengers to strap in and put on oxygen masks. The situation rapidly deteriorates until the pilots have no choice but to ditch in the ocean. Chuck is thrown clear, clinging to a life raft he was handed before the crash. The scene is one that is nerve wracking to say the least. Sound and special effects are used to maximum effect for a truly frightening crash.

Chuck spends a terrifying night in the raft before waking the next morning on a beach. There is no sign of the crew but numerous FedEx packages have washed up on shore with him. Being the good employee he collects all the packages and sorts them. At this point we mostly see extreme confusion on Chuck's face. He's all alone and doesn't really seem to know what to do with himself.

Chuck suddenly has to learn how to fend for himself. The island has no ponds or streams so he has to figure out how to get fresh water. He has all sorts of troubles figuring out how to get into coconuts. He has to learn how to fish and/or capture crabs. Most importantly he needs to discover how to make fire. This particular task proves the most daunting as Chuck suffers numerous failures before finally succeeding. During most of this Chuck has only himself. He rarely talks leaving Hanks to communicate all his feelings with just his face. Things improve a bit when he finds a volleyball amongst the packages and begins talking to it.

During all of this Hanks is a bit chubby. But the movie eventually skips forward four years and we see what years of isolation and island living has done to Chuck. He is now skinny, heavily tanned and sporting long hair bleached blonde by the sun and a matching beard. Production on the movie was halted for several months so that Hanks could lose the weight and it pays off handsomely. The change in appearance is shocking but perhaps more shocking is the change in Chuck's eyes. A haunted look has taken up residence on his face, replacing the confused but hopeful expression seen earlier. There is absolutely no sign of hope in his eyes any longer. He is merely a man surviving. Ambition and hope have deserted him completely.

Chuck is now a man who has become proficient at surviving on the island. He fishes with careless ease and has built a far more comfortable home for himself, though still very primitive. From a quick look at his cave it is clear his will to live is tied entirely to his love for Kelly. He stares constantly at her picture in the watch (long broken) and has painted her portrait on his walls. Chuck's sanity is a bit in question now too. He talks incessantly to his volleyball (named Wilson) and from his behavior it's evident that Chuck thinks this is a two way conversation.

Now normally I steer clear of big spoilers but the advertising for the movie has made it very clear that Chuck does eventually escape the island so I think I can discuss the end a bit. Once he escapes I kept asking the same question to myself over and over. What now Chuck? This man has been irrevocably changed by his experience. He has had four years of his life stolen from him. Can he reunite with Kelly? Surely she has moved on with her life by now. Can he return to his job? Chuck had to learn to live without time, without people, without the world. Is it reasonable for him to return to a job that focuses so completely on time and keeping the world in contact? The movie simply refuses to answer most of these questions and for that it should be commended. There is no simple answer to any of these questions. For a movie of reasonable running time to attempt to answer them is the height of hubris. This is a situation that demands a lot of thought and consideration and the director has the good sense to trust the audience to do that for themselves.

That isn't the only area where director Robert Zemeckis deserves praise. He proves a very sure footed director with this movie. Numerous times in the movie he holds a moment seemingly forever, heightening tension where a lesser director would have found none. His camera angles are always carefully chosen to withhold information from the audience until the last moment, raising its impact. As always he proves highly adept at using modern computer generated imagery in a way that seems so natural that the audience never knows that it saw a special effect. The plane crash is the most impressive example of that.

Even with all of Zemeckis' good work this movie belongs to Hanks. He goes above and beyond the call of duty to make this role come alive. Working without any other actors or much dialogue he commands the screen. He manages to convey huge amounts of information to the audience simply with his facial expressions. That makes his transformation that much more shocking because the face we've been counting on for reading his state of mind has now been rather radically altered. Hanks becomes almost a totally different character as the Chuck we once knew is slowly replaced with a different person.

Helen Hunt also does a fine job but really doesn't have much to do. Her character exists more as an anchor for Chuck than as a fully realized person. Still Hunt manages to shine in a couple key scenes.

This movie is definitely different from the typical movie from a Hollywood studio. Almost all of the action occurs very early on and much of the movie passes with no dialogue. There are only two major characters. It's the kind of movie that Hollywood rarely makes. That alone earns it a bit more credit because a movie like this is a huge gamble as far as success at the box office. Really all it has to sell it is Hanks' name. There's a reason though that Hanks' movies have been largely highly successful at the box office. He picks solid material and creates believable and entertaining characters. This movie is no exception and may mark his best work yet.

- John Shea