A sabbathic experience

Rating: Null/10 (22 January 2001)

I saw it hours before I wrote this lines and I'm still feeling exhausted as I cried for about 2/3 of the picture. It's a cleansing, sabbathic and religious experience watching this movie. Not because it mentions the word God or other divine entity (note the funeral) but it has faith and the character believes in itself even when he thinks he no longer exists as a human. Beginning with a crossroad somewhere in the middle of an American desert (instantly reminder of "North by Northwest") the movie starts within a minute in a frantic pace of a FedEx box traveling (physically and with the camera) from America to Russia in another well-remembered voyeur-voyage by Zemeckis. Frantic or not, we soon discover the meaning of TIME and SPACE in this multiple-paced well-placed cameras showing the exact spots of what Time and Space are supposed to stand in the castaway's life. Zemeckis' twisting and turning views in this movie are sometimes experiencing what the character does, other times before and after him and we enjoy more viewing this movie as a voyeur (didn't Hitchcock teach us a lesson about the art of cinema?) rather than what's going to happen in the plot which is a bit secondary. Then, there are the boxes. The Pandora boxes, only this time what's inside them loses power for what they are and steps in another dimension of their usefulness. They act as tools and sometimes as characters to solve the problems of one's Cast Away. They expand time (the volleyball "ball") and produce space (the blades of the ice rollerskate). Finally, the blood. Lots of it. Not like a sign of death but incredibly, as a flux of life that the castaway uses to generate his feelings (Wilson or Son of Will) or to survive (the blood spill when he's making fire) and, thus returning to the religious thoughts in the start of the comment, he must need to sacrifice his body in order to (re)gain spiritual meaning about being alive. Note detail: he only eats after a long time drinking coconut MILK! Crossroads are exactly where this post-modern urban castaway stands in the beginning of the movie regarding his multiple choices. Career/marriage, workplace/home to name a few. Eventually he'll get to make one in a limit situation: the girlfriend's watch opposed to the lifeguard-waistcoat. It's a nice ellipse when he ends up in the place that was only known by the viewer in the beginning, having to choose a course in the vast desert. And this time he really chooses! P.S.: I hope Tom Hanks will deservedly be the first man to win three awards for leading role in the history of Oscars!