Todo está perdido

A man (Robert Redford) is sailing alone in his yacht but during the night, his vessel collides with a container adrift on the sea while he sleeps. The yacht is flooded and she loses her navigation and communication equipment and heads to a violent storm. When the yacht sinks, the sailor embarks in the liferaft that is carried adrift by the currents to a shipping lane. His fight for survival begins.

"All Is Lost" tells the story of a skilled sailor fighting to survive stranded in the high sea. Robert Redford has stunning performance, the cinematography is impressive but the writer is lazy and should have researched more about navigation and lifesaving procedures. In addition, there is no character development and the viewer never knows what the man is doing in the Indian Ocean.

Vessels have bilge pumps and EPIRB and pleasure yachts usually have also portable bilge pumps. Robert Redford is shaved all the time and never wears lifejacket or immersion suit or even a hat to protect from the sun, maybe because he is the star of the movie and needs to show his face. The inflatable liferaft does not seem to have the usual survival equipment and the sailor does not have a survival kit ready on board for emergency situations. But despite the flaws, "All Is Lost" is not a bad movie. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Até o Fim" ("Till the End")

This is one to watch, especially if you have watched and enjoyed Cast Away. To be honest I did not expect to like it so much, knowing the type of movie this is. It is really fascinating though to realise how well this movie goes on based purely on one man's resourcefulness. The pace of the film is great with the action scenes keeping me on the edge of my seat. Redford in his late 70s gives a truly solid performance confronting his misadventures with extreme calmness and pure dignity. The character gives real time lessons on how to survive under such dire circumstances. A film dedicated to mortality. Quite different from what you may have seen in related films. I definitely recommend it!

Ocean sailing that went sour. Man wakes up in the middle of absolute oceanic nowhere to find he had collided with a container, causing damage to his boat as well as rendering communications totally ineffective.

The film is made as a series of events aiming for this man to fail. Once restoration and improvement of conditions is achieved, a setback occurs. He is exposed, unprotected and threatened once again. Death is constantly around the corner.

The sequences are very realistic, accurately depicting the inherent risk of sea adventure. The calm is followed by a storm which is succeeded by another calm.

The success of this film lies in the fact that it is held well together, despite the complete absence of dialogue and this why only an actor of the stature of Robert Redford could pull this off and is in terrific shape despite his 77 years.

Ultimately, it is a tale of triumph of the human spirit that will not yield in the face of adversity and will fight to the very end to survive.

Here we follow a solo sailor who experiences an extraordinary run of bad luck. We follow in detail his attempts to extricate himself. Right from the beginning, the life-threatening accidents that befall him seem insurmountable, but he is a tough man who attempts to deal with them one after the other. It becomes a grim battle for survival.

You do not need to be a sailor to enjoy this movie. And indeed if you are a sailor, apparently you won't enjoy it, as shown by the numerous wealthy reviewers lambasting the film because of the technical sailing details. Apparently a lot of rich old guys think they could have done better than the character in this film.

If you're not much of a sailor (like me), you'll spend a good deal of time wondering what he's doing and marveling at his self reliance. I don't know whether the sailing part was realistic. To enjoy the movie, it doesn't matter. It all seemed bone-crunchingly realistic, although at one point I did wonder whether an exhausted 77-year-old has the strength to haul himself up the side of a sailboat like that.

This is an unusual film for several reasons.

First, there is almost no dialogue. You can watch it with the sound off.

Second, it is set completely on two vessels in the Indian Ocean, but the camera almost never scans the horizon. We rarely actually see the sea or the entire boat. Sometimes there are several astonishing shots of the boat from underneath. All this gives the film a strangely claustrophobic feel, despite its maritime setting.

Third, the protagonist is a taciturn, very competent sailor who also happens to be a man in his late 70s. The movie has nothing to say, but yet much to say, about old age.

This movie is like "Gravity" in that it depicts a human being in extremis. The main character is not the sailor, but Fate. The sea represents a brutal and uncaring universe. Like "Gravity", the ultimate message is: when sh*t happens you can lie down and give up, or you can deal with it. The choice is up to you. Most of us have a hard time with that because it's easier to curse Fate and condemn the universe as unfair.

I immediately hated the idea and movie when I first heard about it. After leaving the cinema in the half 10 years ago in Cast Away disaster and hating all Tom Hanks movies after wards, I thought "no, not again!". Then I forgot about it.

Then fate comes in. Here I sit with my girlfriend in a lazy Sunday afternoon and we're preparing to watch Grand Budapest Hotel on DVD. But wait, All Is Lost begins in a movie channel before I switch to DVD. While I was busy with preparing wine & cheese my girlfriend says "wait, this movie got my attention, let's see where it goes".

After 2 hours we sit with admiration on the simplicity & minimalist style vs. the strong portrayal of human will and survival instinct against nature elementals. Yes, we definitely liked this movie.

And of course we're not sailors. We do not know the technical details of what to do or what not to do in sailing. Of course there were some logical problems when we asked "wait, why did he do that?" in some scenes - but this didn't bother us enormously.

But when I entered and read the reviews here, I confront with human ego, I-know-everything attitude of "sailors" here. Ego is interesting, don't get me wrong I do not criticize this. If this movie was about health & illness and the main character was ill in a remote island and tries to heal himself, you should see my technical rant here as a health professional. Yes this is E.G.O., Everyone Got One.

But if you can pass ego, this is real nice movie showing the strong will and instinct of human being vs nature. Definitely not a waste of time as I prejudicially thought before..