In an age of hyperconnectedness, the completely solitary adventure acquires a harrowing attraction. In “127 Hours,” “Life of Pi,” “Gravity” and now “All Is Lost,” life without so much as a Facebook status update becomes pure, noble, exhilarating — and extremely dangerous.
This rousing experimental film features one actor, Robert Redford, as an unnamed sailor set adrift when his yacht is gashed. There are only a few words of dialogue, most of them from a farewell note he narrates at the beginning.
Eight days earlier, we wake up with “our man,” as the credits identify him. Alone on the sea, he notices his ship has been badly damaged, he’s taking on water and his signaling equipment is useless. The movie consists of his resourceful acts to patch up the ship, secure fresh water and survive several storms that knock him into the drink. As Redford put it at the end of “A River Runs Through It,” “I am haunted by waters.” You know you’re having a bad day when you look through the skylight and see the Indian Ocean.
Writer-director J.C. Chandor, who also did “Margin Call,” makes the contrarian decision not to have our man talk to himself. This is the brave, and wrong, choice: There’s a limit to how much we can connect with a hero through action alone, and it wouldn’t be out of place for this man to speak his thoughts aloud. Nor does the film ever devise anything as ingeniously affecting as Tom Hanks’ love for that volleyball in “Cast Away.”
Our man also doesn’t respond with the superhuman courage of the hero of “127 Hours,” nor is his situation as extreme as the ones in “Pi” or “Gravity.” “I could have thought of that” is a reasonable reaction to the film, and though we identify completely with the sailor’s plight, Redford remains more movie star than actor.
Even after nearly being killed when knocked off the ship, our man registers only the exertion of a moderate workout. True, the character could be a man of preternatural calm, but after watching Redford on-screen for half a century, it seems more likely that he simply can’t do deep anguish. He’s never done it before, never really stretched. This is the man who, when playing a British character in “Out of Africa,” simply shrugged and used his everyday American accent.
The film is still a gripping experience, though, with its circling sharks, its sun-dappled beauty and its agonies of shattered hope. At one point I was convinced that Sandra Bullock would splash down next to our man in her space capsule and Hanks’ Maersk ship from “Captain Phillips” would steam by to pick up both of them.
Its sparse use of Alex Ebert’s piercing score, which at times suggests the otherworldly drama of Vangelis and (over the closing credits) the ragged splendor of Tom Waits, does much to conjure the emotional force that Redford can’t quite muster. I doubt I (or many others) will watch this film more than once, but I’d love to hear Ebert’s compositions again.