Very good film

Rating: 7/10 (1 July 2016)

For a big Hollywood film, this is good. As ambitious Fed Ex worker Chuck Noland, whose plane crashes into the Pacific and who washes up alone on a deserted island, Tom Hanks is great. The cinematography by Don Burgess is lovely. Director Robert Zemeckis keeps a tight pace and engages the viewer constantly, despite just one character, little dialogue and one location. The plane crash is shot brilliantly - just as you'd imagine it would be like. One minute you're doing something trivial, the next, the plane is diving towards the ocean. You feel like you're inside the plane, and you can see Chuck thinking, this it it. The film has a lot to say about how consumerist and shallow we are, and how utterly work obsessed and ignorant of what really matters Chuck is before the accident. On the island, he proves to be both incredibly vulnerable and incredibly resilient, as he learns to feed himself, find shelter, and even create an imaginary friend - Wilson the volleyball. It's to the credit of Hanks and Zemeckis that the volleyball Wilson -- yes, an inanimate object - - almost seems human at times. On second viewing, I understood the ending. I love the final scene. But most of the coming back scenes go on for way too long. Hanks and Helen Hunt don't have much chemistry. Maybe the situation of Chuck's resurrection after being dead is just too hard to act out. I like how Zemeckis is very serious about what a tragedy, what a loss his four years without human interaction have been. And he depicts well just how harsh, unforgiving and godless Chuck's life as a castaway is, The choice Chuck makes to leave the island is rightly seen as a momentous one. If he stayed, he could have continued to eke out a living, but it was a pretty paltry existence, with a poor chance of ever being rescued. By building a raft and paddling out into the ocean, he risks death, but also gains a greater chance for salvation. The most effective feeling the film evoked in me is 'what would I do in the same situation?' So it's a film with both empathy and sympathy for the enormous bad luck that befalls Chuck.