such wonders

Rating: 9/10 (6 January 2001)

In many ways, Cast Away reminds me very much of another very good Robert Zemeckis film, Contact. Both of them had endings that were somewhat disappointing (as one person I heard said it about Contact "I waited three hours to see the aliens and they're her freaking father?"). Cast Away's ultimate conclusion was even more ambiguous and troubling, but that does not keep it from being an enthralling and interesting film and one of the ten best movies of the year, just as Contact was enthralling and interesting and one of the ten best movies of its year.
In short, Hanks plays Chuck Noland, a gung-ho Fedex supervisor/trouble shooter/slave driver who travels the world licking troubled Fedex centers into shape. He loves Kelly Frears (Helen Hunt), a Ph.D student close to finishing her dissertation. On Christmas Eve, and on the eve he was to propose marriage, he is sent on a flight to Asia. The plane goes off course and then down in an incredibly gripping sequence. Noland (No-land - even his name has meaning in this film) is the only survivor and he washes ashore onto an isolated rock in the middle of the Pacific with nothing to survive with. He salvages his raft (the survival kit and flares went down with the plane), and some Fedex packages that wash ashore, and sets up camp.
The bulk of the film is made up of Hank's attempts to survive on the island, primarily in two episodes - how he acclimatizes and learns to survive, and then four years later, when he at last has a chance to get off the island. The script is really remarkably well done, considering that Hanks has no one to speak to for the bulk of the film (although he does create a 'friend' out of a volleyball with whom he converses). The Fedex packages that wash ashore at first seem worse than useless, but their uses are very clever and hidden. Noland does all of the things you think of doing yourself, often at the same time you are reaching the same conclusions, although I have to say he's many times more resourceful than I - I would have died on that island. The drama of surviving, and Hanks' abilities as an actor to keep everything human, are engrossing. Noland's island is a forbidding spit of sand and rock way out somewhere, and there is no man Friday to help this Robinson Crusoe. Every problem he has, from making fire to dealing with a rotting tooth with no anesthetic and no tools, are dealt with in a straightforward and realistic fashion.
Zemeckis's direction is outstanding. The crash scene is tense, frightening and incredibly well done (so well done it deserves mention more than once). Zemeckis (and his cinematographer) strand Hanks on an island that they show is both amazingly beautiful and also barren and desolate. Hanks' buddy, Wilson the volleyball, is handled so well by the director (and the script) that Hanks' constant banter with it makes you begin to understand how he relies on the volleyball to keep his sanity while at the same time imparting the feeling that the ball really is talking back somehow.
Noland's escape from the island is also very well done, and this should be no spoiler to anyone who has seen a commercial for the film that gives this part away. The bittersweet reunification with Hunt's Frears is effective, and Hanks has a wonderful speech at the close of the film that encapsulates the film's theme, about the powerlessness and hopelessness we sometimes feel in life and the importance of tides. Then it maybe goes on a little too long, and leaves with a totally ambiguous and unfulfilling ending. Oh well. I'll only have to watch this one nine more times before I'm sick of it. Nine out of ten. Laughing Lion says go check it out.