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Cast Away
***
Rated on a 4-star scale
Screening venue: Warner Village (Birkenhead Conway Park)
Released in the UK by UIP on January 12, 2001; certificate 12; 143 minutes;
country of origin USA; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Robert Zemeckis; produced by
Tom Hanks, Jack Rapke, Steve Starkey, Robert
Zemeckis.
Written by William Broyles Jr.
Photographed by Don Burgess; edited by Arthur
Schmidt.
CAST.....
Tom Hanks..... Chuck Noland
Helen Hunt..... Kelly Frears
Nick Searcy..... Stan
Christopher Noth..... Jerry Lovett
Lari White..... Bettina Peterson
"Cast Away" is one of the more involving
movies I've seen -- when it sticks to the heart of the story. Unfortunately
some insane impulse inspired the filmmakers to cut half of that heart out
and tack on a meaningless closing act, not to mention reveal the prologue,
set-up, story development, ending and epilogue in the movie's trailer. How
could the writer of "Apollo 13" and the director of "Forrest Gump" and "Back
to the Future" be so submissive to traditional three-act storytelling and
idiotic studio marketing? Did they feel they had to atone for the bravery
of their picture's main section, which has almost no dialogue and relies
on the gestures of one actor? This is a good film; if it had stuck to its
guns, it could have become a cinema classic.
Tom Hanks stars as Chuck Noland, a time-obsessed
Federal Express foreman who winds up the sole survivor of a plane crash,
washing up on a desert island in the middle of Pacific nowhere. Stranded,
with no rescue mission clearly visible, Chuck finds himself having to become
self-sufficient, learning how to create tools out of primitive natural resources,
crack open coconuts for their milk, food and storage value, catch fish with
twigs, and create fire the way they teach you in the Scouts. There are a
few washed-up Fed-Ex packages to keep him company, but no people, no creature
comforts, and no hope but that he creates for himself.
We get so deeply engrossed in the picture because
we're forced to concentrate on the small physical details of the island.
And as Chuck has no one to talk to -- except for when he mutters to himself,
or talks to a Wilson volleyball on which he paints a face using his own blood
-- Hanks (who gained and lots amazing amounts of weight for the project)
has to play the role in tiny movements and gestures. In not overreaching,
Hanks reminds us why he is such a good dramatic actor -- having started in
showbiz as a comedian, he has both an acute sense of timing and an awareness
that to be an effective performer you have to take things seriously. He brings
us into the mind of Chuck -- by the time the character has got used to solitude,
painting on caves and moving like a Neanderthal, we understand his instincts,
and when he comes to rely on his conversations with Wilson, we too feel like
the ball is an important presence in the story.
"Cast Away" makes a large blunder in three small
words: 'Four years later.' The movie cuts from the seeds of Hanks's experience
to the climax with no coverage of what's in between, when that's what we
really want to see. "There are some things Gilligan never told us," Chuck
remarks to himself at one point, but this movie doesn't fill in those gaps,
which is crucial for a picture that relies on small details. There should
have been more footage of the experience on the island -- what happens in
between his initial stages of life as a tubby castaway and his eventual outcome
as a hardened, skinny survivor -- and less of what comes
later…
If you've seen the trailer for this movie, you
know the ending; if not, you should probably stop reading.
Every film lover with the slightest bit of taste
knows that it's better for stories to linger in our minds to be completed,
rather than for everything to happen onscreen. So why doesn't this movie
end with the beautifully suggestive shot during Hanks's attempt at escape
from the island in which a boat rides up behind him as he drifts along on
his raft? Instead, we get a tortuous last act involving Hanks's return home
-- including, I kid you not, a speech about everything he's learnt from being
marooned, and the manner in which we should approach each day. If all that
crap had been cut out, there would have been room for more island footage,
innit?
Ultimately, what "Cast Away" feels like is an
overview or summary of a great movie -- a story treatment waiting to be trimmed,
perhaps, except on celluloid rather than paper. The director, Robert Zemeckis,
has great talent, as we can see in this film and his previous successes,
but does he have genius? I'm not so sure. Would a genius create something
as strange and wonderful as the middle sections of "Cast Away", then be so
passionless about it as to inject it with diseased Hollywood formula and
market it without regard for its audiences?
COPYRIGHT© 2001 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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