All Is Lost

When I saw the movie, All is Lost, I thought I was watching a movie based on a true story. The movie is very realistic in that it portrays perfectly the way I think someone would feel out in the ocean all alone. Many people will probably not like this film for how little dialogue there is in it.

For sailing enthusiasts this film does have a few reality checks. But for the most part I felt very much the same as Our Man, the character in this film. This is a credit to the director and his ability to make the audience feel vested in the main character's survival. This movie, while very good, does move slow at times. And while I am not a sailor I did notice a few of the reality checks in this film too.

What really makes the movie for me is that there are actual ocean disasters that are eerily similar in how they play out for the main character in this film. If know of some of these you will understand why this movie and its portrayal of the main character are so well done.

The ending is something left entirely to the viewer to interpret. But even that I found to be very realistic and probably the best part of the movie. This movie does a great job of trying to show the viewer how even when you seemingly do things right, bad things can still happen. It follows the old adage of "when it rains, it pours" or "one thing after another".

All is lost or is it?

Redford is great and this film shows how such a simple idea with one actor can work. As a filmmaker, it was interesting to see how a dialogue-free movie can work visually with a story that reminded me of Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea." For me, the story was a metaphor or allegory for life and our struggles. Cinematography was good, shot on the Arri Alexa, one of the hot cameras at the moment. The lack of dialogue and having only one actor made it a meditation for me on the visual elements. I hope Redford gets Oscar nomination. I'm inspired that a veteran like Redford had confidence in Chandor to go on this experimental film journey together.

This simple but very survival movie about a man stuck on a sinking boat is very engrossing and watchable. Who needs grand over blown special effects and fake CGI when you have a good story - it holds attention from beginning to end.

Direction is good - you can almost feel the heat, thirst, waves etc that have to be endured.

Would liked to have a bit more before and after about how he got out there and after being rescued.

Feel for the elderly Redford getting all wet and filming this movie must have been physically demanding.

Good and quite memorable.

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..

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.