Friday, August 9, 2013

Cast Away (2000)

Director: Robert Zemeckis                           Writer: William Broyles Jr.
Film Score: Alan Silvestri                            Cinematography: Don Burgess
Starring: Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, Nick Searcy and Chris Noth

One of the most fascinating things about this film is consideration of the title. It’s not Castaway, a noun indicating the person who has been stranded or abandoned. The title is Cast Away, a two word verb phrase that indicates something has been cast out against its will. It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s an important distinction because of what it says not only about the main character, but because of what that character has had to abandon in order to survive, and what he has had to abandon when he returns to civilization. When the film is viewed through the symbolism of the title, it takes on a host of relevance that goes beyond the mere simplicity of the plot. And the plot is a relatively straightforward desert island story, but also has some subtle wrinkles that are impressive.

Tom Hanks is an executive at FedEx who is obsessed with time which, no doubt, makes him great at his job. The film also emphasizes time when it deals with his relationship to Helen Hunt. After a return trip from Moscow, he goes to her office in the college where she’s finishing her doctorate and it becomes clear they must spend a lot of time apart. At Christmas dinner he gets a page and the scene cuts directly to the two of them going through their day-planners to carve out time for themselves. Finally, as he is boarding the plane for his next trip, he proposes and she gives him a pocket watch with her picture in it. After the crash has cast him away on the island time has suddenly stopped. There is only the ebb and flow of the waves, the weather and the sun. It’s fascinating to watch. It’s only after a few years that we see the calendar that he’s made that measures the months on the cave wall by the position of the sun.

The other obvious aspect of this kind of story deals with isolation. Hanks is very good in this part of the film, but writer William Broyles also helped him out by having packages from the cargo plane wash up on shore, one of them containing the volleyball that, with the addition of Hanks’ bloody handprint becomes “Wilson,” allowing Hanks to talk out loud on occasion. Gradually the castaway begins to abandon everything in his island life that he doesn’t need, the pager, his clothes, even human contact. Though it seems there is a definite undercurrent of desire in him for human contact, and a suggestion that the lack of it is making him a little crazy, what I read into this is merely a coping mechanism that is clearly jettisoned once he gets back to civilization. This is reinforced by the fact that his seemingly suicidal gesture of making it off the island is really a well thought out plan to avoid accidental death, and a way of maintaining control in his life.

Robert Zemeckis has had a very successful career in Hollywood, with some unavoidable duds along the way. But despite some absolutely huge successes, like the Back to the Future trilogy, he continues to challenge himself by making intense character studies like Flight. This film is in a similar vein. Filmed in chronologic order so as to document Hanks’ inevitable weight loss on the island, he is also unafraid of making necessary choices that will benefit the artistic underpinning of his pictures. Hanks, ever since Apollo 13, has been masterful on screen and this is yet another example. Helen Hunt has also been very good in films like As Good as It Gets and Pay it Forward. Cast Away is a character study, plain and simple, but Hanks’ everyman quality brings the film home to viewers in a way that they can see themselves in a similar situation. It’s a powerful and engaging film that continues to deliver with repeated viewings.

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