Survival on a tropical island teaches survival everywhere.

Rating: 9/10 (1 December 2001)

Fate or chance events removes a Chuck (played by Tom Hanks), a FedEx employee driven and consumed by the constant advance time, from all he knows. He is left on a deserted tropical island with almost nothing. How can he survive? Why should he?
In the most powerful fade-to-black ever, we are utterly alone with merciless rainy night as our raft heaves in the South Pacific. Thus does Chuck begin his journey of self.
Chuck's value for time fades, letting years drift away as he becomes a primitive. Chuck clings to his humanity with his remembered love relationship (played by Helen Hunt) and developing a new friendship with Wilson the volleyball (played by Wilson the volleyball). Chuck's friendship with Wilson shows the strength of social bonds and his desperate need to have a relationship. That social side of humanity is every bit as important to survival as finding water or food. Seemingly chance events ignite Chuck's rebirth as a master of the time than once ruled him. Time becomes just another tool he uses to go on surviving.
Don't think of this movie as an island survival movie whose epilogue begins with his rescue. You will think the "ending" is too long, and you will miss the point. The island portion with its random cruelties of nature is a model of the survival that Chuck (and all of us) must face. He returns to civilization and must choose to go on with the good and bad consequences of what has happened. In fact, this movie does not end, it continues within your own imagination.
This film makes marvelous use of the absence of music. On the island, he is without it. Elsewhere, the most powerful moments are created with silence, or with sounds of nature, which may only be set up, or framed by music.
The film has wonderful sense of irony in its use of time and its references to time: the train conductors pocket watch (symbol of the first industrialized need for time accuracy) with the photo of his beloved is Chuck's tie back to his previous life. Chuck creates an analemma calendar. Chuck quotes himself on the importance of time.
Chuck's journey of self teaches him to accept what he cannot control, to shape what he can, and, like a true survivor, to heed small hints sent his way. His profound apologies to his FedEx friend and to Hunt's character show his mastery over fate does not excuse him from his humanity. He discovers on the island and back in Texas the role of hope in survival. The opening and ending of the movie have many details which reward viewing multiple times.
A Christian perspective: Chuck's character would not work so well were he in a living relationship with Christ. It is impossible for a Christian to have the same sense of loneliness.