Film Review | All is Lost

Tales of survival are a Hollywood favourite. You don't have to look too far for proof of this, either. Last year's Life of Pi - detailing the existential journey of a boy stranded in the ocean with a vicious tiger - was an Academy Awards favourite last year; as space-bound nail-biter Gravity is this year around (how successful the Sandra Bullock/George Clooney vehicle inevitably turns out to be will be revealed to us tomorrow morning).

And as even the success of misery-porn epic 12 Years a Slave proves, audiences tend to gobble these things up with glee. The 'trend' is arguably near-ancient (Robinson Crusoe anyone? To go back even further: The Odyssey?). What's at the root of the obsession, I wonder? Just a basic attraction to adventure? Or is it all about the appeal of watching people who are in trouble attempt to squirm out of a tight spot?

Whatever the reasons behind the enduring popularity of the genre, its most recent example at the cinema certainly doesn't pander to audience expectation or accessibility.

Operating on a pinprick of a minimalist idea, director J.C. Chandor's All is Lost leaves Robert Redford's unnamed protagonist moored in the Indian Ocean and... that's it. No really: the film's only character wakes up to find that a submerged shipping container has ripped through his boat's hull, and that it's flooding fast.

With nary any knowledge about why the man is on the boat in the first place, the film them proceeds to detail the subsequent eight days in excruciating, dialogue-free detail.

In fact, we are never even let in on why, exactly, the man was on that particular trip in the first place. Save for an enigmatic slice of narration in the film's opening frame, we get absolutely nothing on the character's biography and no sense of his motivations.

Against the haunting image of the blood red culprit-shipping container in twilight, Redford matter-of-factly addresses an unspecified recipient.

"I'm sorry. I know that means little at this point, but I am. I tried. I think you would all agree that I tried. To be true, to be strong, to be kind, to love, to be right, but I wasn't. All is lost."

Save for a few desperate cries and expletives, that's the only time we hear the protagonist's voice throughout the entire duration of the 106-minute film. This gaping void is the first, and arguably largest, challenge of this cinematic endurance test. But it's also, arguably, its greatest strength.

By refusing to furnish us with any character background, what we end up observing is a psychological and social cipher: as far as we're concerned, he's not really a human being at this point - more of a poorly-equipped animal. This reduces our ability to sympathise with him to the barest, most immediate level, which has its ups and downs. It's trying on your patience to observe someone whose social make-up you have no idea about amble around on a boat for the better part of two hours. But if you stick with it, what you'll get in the end is an admirably assured, vivid depiction of a man quite literally weathered by nature.

Redford, of course, has to take the lion's share of the credit for his efforts here. At 77, not only is the veteran actor a cosmetically impressive sight... the signs of age on his face - comparatively impeccable as they may be - work to tell a story of their own. But the quietly simmering performance is not to be sniffed at. The consistency with which Redford presents his character's doomed fate is the real kicker here. Never once descending into sentimentality or succumbing to histrionics, he ekes out pity without openly asking for it.

If anything, a case could be made for the performance being too subdued, perhaps - for Redford and Chandor ultimately presenting what is some sort of Platonic ideal of stoic determination.

The film's overall quietness is key, however, and this even applies to the surrounding natural landscape that, necessarily, suffuses the entire film. Scored to a sneakily moving soundtrack by Alexander Ebert (of the folk-pop outfit Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros), the seascape is a creature that could just as easily have been filmed by Terrence Malick as Chandor. Often cruel but unfailingly beautiful too, it emphasises the protagonist's fragility throughout, and becomes a truly hypnotic presence as the film homes in on its final act, with Chandor's camera allowing itself to venture just below its surface.

Perhaps this is a film whose longeurs will live more richly in the memory than they would be enjoyed as you watch the film for the very first time, but Chandor's effort is commendable for the sheer commitment to its minimal, central idea. In an age of fast jump-cuts and YouTube-friendly moments, it's refreshing - even humbling - to see a filmmaker execute a simple, evocative idea from start to finish.