Ryan McNeil
It’s fair to say that most of us don’t know what we’re capable of. After all, the true tests we face in life are so few and far between – those moments where fate lines itself up against you and delivers a shot to the body. Some of us might react to such situations with great fear and resignation; devoid of all certainty and predictability, we turtle. Others might grow defiant, scratching and clawing with no regard for the odds, the clock, or the scoreboard.
These people in these moments refuse to be beaten – they feel as though they still have a chance as long as they believe they do. One such person’s story is the subject of an amazing new film.
At the centre of ALL IS LOST is Our Man (seriously – that’s how Robert Redford is credited).
The film begins with the sound of slowly rising water, and a gut-wrenching crunch. We see our man wake below deck on his boat, The Virginia Jean. While he was sleeping, the boat collided with a shipping container that had fallen overboard from a freighter. The corner of the container has now punched a sizeable hole in the hull of his boat, and the craft has taken on a lot of water.
Our man is able to slowly crudely repair the gouge in his boat, and bail most of the water from below deck. However, his power supply and communications have been irreparably damaged.
Shortly after he is able to get a grip on the situation, or at least enough of a grip to make it seem like safety is in sight, a storm blows across the sea and heads straight for our man and his dilapidated boat. It’s then that his resourcefulness will truly be tested…along with his will to survive.
At some stage, one asks oneself “Why go on?”. Why keep patching things together with chewing gum and popsicle sticks? Why fight the elements that continually align themselves against you, as if to say “Mother Nature wants you off the premises by the weekend”. Why not fall into the depths and succumb to the storm? After all, the mistake has already been made. One is well of the grid all on one’s own, and every emergency measure has essentially been rendered moot by the inciting incident. All signs point to one’s number being up. In seeing all of that, why struggle and postpone the inevitable?
Perhaps some of it is stubbornness. Perhaps deep down, nobody wants to admit defeat even when they are clearly beaten. We beat ourselves up more than any other person would, but we are hellbent to course-correct. We struggle and we squirm, bound and determined not to lead to our own undoing. We become so angry with having played a hand in the incident, that we want to play an equal hand in escaping it. “I got this” we tell ourselves, “I’m not screwed yet”. The gut feeling is that if we got ourselves in, we can get ourselves out.
Perhaps some of it is tenacity. No matter how dire the circumstances, there’s something inside of us that prompts us to hang on tight and keep our heads down. Weather those waves as they wash over us, keep putting one foot in front of the other, and at some stage the solution will present itself. It doesn’t matter that its one-hundred metres straight down, as long as he hold tight to that ledge, we can still be saved.
Whether he does what he does out of stubbornness, tenacity, or some other motivating factor, it is truly fascinating to watch what Robert Redford endures as Our Man. Right from the start we can see that he has a chance – he knows how to handle the situation, how to minimize the risk, and how to put himself into a position for rescue. He’s methodical – damned near clinical – in his reaction. That methodical nature saves his ass more than once, often in situations that would kill a lesser person. Watching Our Man work fluidly with the crisis he is in is a beautiful dance of survival. He is not just stranded out there on that ocean, but truly rolling with it. He knows how to lean into it in ways that will keep him alive, and seems to do so with very little effort.
What’s even more fascinating is the way Redford carries everything upon his shoulders. He is given no camcorder to confess to, no volleyball to play off. He gets four moments to express himself vocally, one of which is voice-over of a written message we don’t see him write until later. Beyond those four moments, he keeps us engaged with his weathered look of worry, and his overall body language. His looks of worry, calculation, pain, and determination say more than any lines of dialogue could. What he’s able to do might be best expressed in a late scene where his rescue suddenly seems possible. There’s a panic in his eyes as they widen with excitement, and a resignation in his shoulders as they fall with dismay. It’s a scene we’ve seen in many films just like this, but somehow, the range of emotions Redford conveys seem to cut right down to the bone.
What Redford and writer/director J.C. Chandor are able to do in ALL IS LOST is intense. Without any sleight of hand or narrative device, they keep us transfixed on a singular moment. They don’t bother to tell us how this moment arrived, and don’t care a lick about what happens when the moment is over. They are only interested in keeping us trapped inside of it, unsure if there will even be a moment after. We worry with every creak and crack, leaving our hearts to rise and fall like the waves. We sit in the dark, waiting, worrying, and hoping.
All evidence on the screen tells us that all is lost, but like our man – we don’t want to believe the evidence. We want to believe that we know better.