All is Lost; or, The (Awesome) Old(ish) Man and the Sea

Robert Redford, it’s good to see you again. After a lot of dreamy sighing over midnight slumber-party screenings of The Way We Were in middle school, not to mention school-sanctioned swooning when my history teacher showed us All the President’s Men, Redford was at the top of my list of favorite actors. Well, yes, he’s aged a bit since then, but he still commands the screen in a way few actors can.

And that’s why All is Lost is worth watching. I don’t think it’s for everyone. This is a small movie—small focus, small budget—and we never even learn the only character’s name. As a matter of fact, we know nothing about his life before his sailing yacht is damaged in the middle of the ocean. Even after watching the whole movie, we know very little about him.

One thing we do know is that he is very resourceful. He would give MacGyver a run for his money, rigging up fixes to different problems. Though I’m pretty sure that if the Professor had had the limited but important resources Redford’s character digs up from his boat, Gilligan and company would only have been on the island for a couple of hours. But then there would never have been a musical Ginger/Gilligan version of "Hamlet," and my knowledge of classical music would be even sadder than it already is. So good thing the Professor only had those coconuts.

But back to the movie. At first I wondered how this was going to stretch into a full-fledged feature. But the movie keeps upping the ante, and we were riveted much of the time. My movie-friend-of-the-week mentioned that Redford is 77 years old, and that her dad of similar age wouldn’t last 10 minutes into this story. I’m not sure I would last 10 minutes into this story. Like watching a horror movie where you keep willing the person to NOT answer the phone, or go into the woods, or whatever, I found myself thinking “DON’T go on the deck! Stay in the cabin and keep the door closed!” But he just doesn’t listen to me.

We don’t know a lot about what he’s thinking either. This seems like the most unrealistic thing to me. Set aside the fact that he somehow patches a massive hole in the boat with glue and a paintbrush; set aside the important papers and book that mysteriously stay dry throughout; set aside the fact that he is 77 and getting beaten up and thrown around and still climbs up the mast. The most unrealistic thing to me is that he never talks to himself, aside from a choice and perfectly understandable curse. As someone who constantly finds myself speaking to no one in particular (too much time alone each day), I find it hard to believe he wouldn’t be narrating things to his invisible dog or something.

The man-vs-nature movie could serve as an allegory for any hardship that a person comes up against; I immediately thought of something like a terminal illness. First you have lots of resources, and you feel like you can overcome this. Then your supply of resources begin to narrow, and your attitude changes.

The ending, while a noble idea, seems a little cheesy in implementation and will likely disappoint many viewers. I don’t think I’m spoiling the movie by saying that.

This may not be a movie for everyone. But if you think it might be a movie for you, I’d recommend seeing it in the theater, because it’s hard to imagine having the same reaction to the suspense if you are watching this on your TV at home.

In the end, like I said at the beginning, the real reason to watch it is Robert Redford. While there are aspects of the movie that I admired very much, if you put, say, Nicolas Cage in this film, it would be a joke. There’s just something about Redford that makes it all more powerful.