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Cast Away (2000)
Starring Tom Hanks and Helen Hunt with direction by Robert
Zemeckis
REVIEWED BY DAVID WAINWRIGHT
Cast Away is a modern take on
Robinson Crusoe. Hanks is a busy
manager of Fed Ex, the mail despatch
company, in which he's an exacting
systems engineer, counting the minutes
and seconds. Hanks is helping to
establish a new operation in Moscow,
cajoling the Russians out of their
traditional lethargy. Romantically attached to Helen Hunt and
planning to marry her, Hanks dashes home to Memphis to be
with her for Christmas, only to be urgently called away to a
problem in Tahiti. He promises Hunt to be home for New
Year, a promise that's destined to be dashed.
Whilst on the flight, the aircraft gets into difficulties over the
Pacific in a tropical storm. Unable to maintain control, the pilot
ditches into the ocean, a harrowing and startlingly realistic
moment in which Hanks manages to extricate himself from the
flooded fuselage, escaping from the sinking aircraft with an
inflatable dinghy into the storm-tossed seas. Exhausted and in
a state of shock, Hanks is washed up on a small island where
he finds himself alone, abandoned, and with few provisions.
Thus starts a four year odyssey of having to learn basic survival
techniques in total isolation. The island has few foodstuffs -
coconuts and a lagoon containing fish and shellfish - and no
running water. Faced with a formidable job of survival, Cast
Away's middle section becomes a one man show with Hanks
managing to scratch out a basic existence using the island's few
resources and some wreckage washed ashore from the
aircraft. More challenging still is for Hanks to maintain
his sanity and to preserve the hope that one day he will
be rescued. To that end, he forms a friendship with a
volleyball! Found amongst the washed-up Fed Ex packages,
Hanks paints a face on the ball which becomes his sole
companion during the long, lonely years.
Four years on, after a violent tropical storm, some corrugated
sheeting is washed ashore, the remains of a portable lavatory.
Realising that he may be able to fashion a sail from the sheets
and with sufficient wood to build a raft lashed together with the
stripped out remains of video cassettes, Hanks decides on a do
or die effort to escape the island, fearing that he may end his
days there, alone and forgotten. But he has to negotiate a
dangerous reef offshore. The Pacific belies its name and sends
waves crashing onto the reef, an obstacle which caused Hanks
to come to grief on a previous escape attempt in which his leg
was gashed open. Finally, Hanks escapes to the open sea, but
the island is very remote and passing ships are few and far
between. Floating on his gradually disintegrating raft for some
days, he's finally rescued by a giant tanker ship.
He returns home to a hero's welcome, but it's a bittersweet fate
that befalls him. The memory of Hunt and a fading photograph
of her helped sustain him through the loneliness, but her life has
since moved on and she's no longer free to be his. Both
struggle to come to terms with their renewed acquaintance, but
they have to accommodate to their changed circumstances and
accept that they cannot resume life from where they left it.
Cast Away works very well, particularly in what is mostly a
one man film. Hanks is very strong through the highs and
lows of his isolation. It was a very exacting part requiring
the loss of 50lbs in weight to represent the passing of
four years with very modest food supplies. It was brave
on the part of director Zemeckis to turn over the large central
section of Cast Away to Hanks. It would have been all too
easy to alternate between isolation and civilisation and have a
film about thwarted search and rescue. Instead it's a tale of an
indomitable human spirit and a reduction of life to its bare
essentials -- in stark contrast to the hectic lifestyle that
preceded it in which time is measured in minutes and seconds,
not years.
Hanks is a consummate actor and handles the changing moods of the part very well. Unfortunately, although the opening and closing sections in civilisation seem almost perfunctory, competent yet lightweight tales of romance and sadness, they are essential bookends to the core of Cast Away. Some might baulk too, at what appears at times to be an extended promotional film for Federal Express, the product placement being so prominent throughout. On balance Cast Away is a fine film, but it's the solo Hanks who'll linger long in the memory and he well merited his Oscar nomination for a touching, sad, yet uplifting performance.
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