Riveting, against all odds

Rating: 9/10 (18 January 2001)

PLOT SPOILERS WARNING
You have to give it to the man. Bob Zemeckis, who I consider one of the best directors in Hollywood, lost some of my appreciation after the dreadful "Contact" (If even he wasn't able to save that script, maybe it's because it was so bad that nobody could have), but he has proved this year that he is well and truly back on track, first with "What Lies Beneath" and now with this virtuoso tour-de-force. To keep the spectator glued to the screen for two hours when all you have is one man and a volleyball in a deserted island is almost defying logic, yet Zemeckis manages to pull it off thanks to excellent timing and rhythm, a phenomenal setting (where is this island? I want to go there!), beautifully photographed, and a fabulous, Oscar-worthy performance from Hanks (again... these two were made for each other), portraying the amazing odyssey of endurance and self-discovery of a man who had lost sight of the important things in life. In fact, I was enjoying it so much that I wasn't sure I wanted the poor guy to escape from the island, I wanted to keep watching his adventures...!
I loved the relationship of Chuck with his alter ego Wilson, which becomes as real a character as you could wish for (in fact, I can think of a couple of action movie stars who could probably take acting tips from it...), and was truly saddened when Chuck is forced to abandon him. The fact that Zemeckis could extract so much sympathy from an inanimate object, a face painted on a ball, reminds me of how menacing Kubrick could make a round, red and yellow light look in "2001..", or how much Lucas charmed us with R2-D2's grumpy character, even if we couldn't understand anything he said...
I also loved the fact that, in keeping with his character, Chuck maintained his "integrity", what he considered his essence, at least for the first few days, by not opening the boxes. It did bug me a bit that, when the circumstances force him to do so, he left one of them unscathed to serve as a symbol, a reminder of his former self and his mission in life (as the note says, "This box saved my life"). I thought it was a little bit unrealistic, and I was fearing some terrible but daft final revelation about it ("look! a cellphone!"); but in the end it turns out that what the box contains is not important ("Pulp Fiction" style), but what it represents, which is not only his mission, but his new future, "brought in by the tide.." (If he hadn't saved it, he would never had met his future partner... come on, did anybody really not get the hint of where he was going after the final scene?). Nice final touch.
All in all, a beautiful film and a great performance by Hanks and Zemeckis. They were robbed of a bunch of Oscars, if you ask me.