Gripping, moving, eye-opening

Rating: 8/10 (23 January 2001)

This film made me understand how art was "invented", how man discovered the usefullness of tools, why man gives such immense mythical sense to the symbols he invents. Cast away on a desert island, alone in the most absolute meaning of the word (no other animate creature (accept fish) ever comes across Hanks' path during his stay on the island), jet-flying, hard-working Hanks is reduced to the state of primitive man. There is nothing around him which can help him survive. His landing on the island is his DAY ZERO. However, fate first comes to his rescue when he is unsuccessfully trying to break the hard shell of a coconut with a piece of what appears to be volcanic rock. The rock splinters, but what remains in his hand is a piece of rock which has a sharp edge...a knife!! From then on he can split open his coconuts with ease. (It seems that coconut and fishes are the only things Hanks eats on the island.)
Hanks seems to be extremely scrupuolous in his profession. He only opens the packages which drift into the island with him after a few days, not at once. In one of them he finds a volleyball, for which he cannot figure out any use.
Sometime later, Hanks angrily hits this volleyball with his hand full of blood after he cuts himself while trying to get some fire burning. The red hand-shaped stain on the ball appears to Hanks as if it were a face...and so it becomes his friend and companion on the island...Wilson! The attachment Hanks develops to this symbol will be very evident later on in the film.
I believe that there are just good films, and bad films, nothing else. This is a good film.
Hanks has reached another dimension in his acting, and really I doubt whether there is any other actor around nowadays who can so easily adapt himself to such varied roles as being a simpleton in Forrest Gump, an astronaut in Apollo 13, and a modern-day Robinson Crusoe in this film. Marvellous!
Well, what can I say? I think this comment is long enough as it is! GO SEE THE MOVIE!