Cast Away (2000)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Chuck Noland, a top international manager for FedEx, and Kelly, a Ph.D. student, are in love and heading towards marriage. Then Chuck's plane to Malaysia crashes at sea during a terrible storm. He's the only survivor, and finds himself marooned on a desolate island. With no way to escape, Chuck must find ways to survive in his new home.
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12 films that influenced Cast Away
What critics say influenced Cast Away
Nor is it a tale of spiritual transcendance and acceptance, like "The Incredible Shrinking Man." Rather, it is a relatively straightforward and heartfelt adventure tale of what it takes to be a survivor.
There's a lovely moment when he squats on the ground, contemplating a crate that has washed up, and the shot is composed as homage to " 2001: A Space Odyssey ," Hanks' favorite film.
It’s a bit like the opening of “2001: A Space Odyssey”, the part with the mokeys going along with their daily business, fighting each other paws out, and then one figures he can use a bone to bash heads with, and it’s a moment of sheer triumph.
It's as though the astronauts from "2001: A Space Odyssey" were returned to Earth at the end.
Chuck's obsession with escape takes on the same manic proportions as Steve McQueen in "Papillon" and, when he finally breaks free, you feel his thrill.
A man stranded on a desert island has served as the premise for classic literature like Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson, and has even figured into the recent fad of wildly popular and intellectually barren TV shows like Survivor.
However, it works by virtue of viewer identification with the situation: you constantly ask yourself what you would do in a similar situation, since it�s a notion anyone bred on a diet of Swiss Family Robinson and Gilligan�s Island has entertained on occasion.
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It also includes a wry, fitting ending that might best be described as Capra-esque (as in Frank Capra, the maker of such films as "It's a Wonderful Life").
"Cast Away" may not be the film that I would want with me if I was stuck on a deserted island (that honor would go to "The Empire Strikes Back"), but it still fits the bill as a cinematic paradise that celebrates the triumph of the human spirit.
As has been widely reported, production was halted for a year after the first two acts were shot so that Hanks could pull a Raging Bull in reverse, dropping some 50 pounds to reflect the weight his character loses after four years of eating coconuts and fish.
The filmmakers pulled off the resulting radical change in Hanks' appearance by shutting down the production for a year so the actor could do a reverse "Raging Bull" and drop a startling amount of weight in the middle of the movie.
Tornatore's decision to bring the film full circle finds the fully-grown Salvatore in a position not unlike that of Tom Hanks' Chuck Noland in Cast Away.
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After giving us a plane crash that rivals the one in director Peter Weir's "Fearless" for suspense and horrible beauty, the usually flashy and fun-loving Zemeckis ("What Lies Beneath," "Back to the Future," "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?") opts for an almost documentary-style approach here, with cunning use of silence, darkness and the sound of pounding rain to convey Chuck's disorientation and desperation.
Goody, then, but then “Cast Away” makes a mistake that “The Truman Show” avoided: it shows its protagonist’s return to the “real world”.
At its most predictable, "Cast Away" is exactly the movie you'd expect the post-"Forrest Gump" Robert Zemeckis to make (and a movie far, far removed from the delectable nastiness of his 1980 "Used Cars" or his 1992 "Death Becomes Her").
I'm sure there will be wags who will glibly compare Cast Away to the likes of "Gilligan's Island" and "Survivor", but, in tone, approach, and overall accomplishment, this atypical Robinson Crusoe tale bears a strong resemblance to one of director Robert Zemeckis' earlier efforts, Contact.
Director Robert Zemeckis (What Lies Beneath, Contact) and screenwriter William Broyles Jr. (Entrapment, Apollo 13) build quite a suspenseful story out of the peculiarities of Chuck’s character: How long will it be before he opens those boxes?
Zemeckis is a stunnningly brilliant technical director and he manages to pull a Contact once again: there isn’t a hell of a lot happening that any sane person would consider, er, interesting but the atmosphere he maintains makes it impossible for us to take our eyes off it.
Zemeckis' previous wonderful films, "Forrest Gump" and "Contact" were able to make the most of the fact that they seemed to have more of a message than they really did.