Directed by: Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, Chris Noth
Cast Away begins tracking a Fed Ex package to Moscow, where Fed Ex executive Chuck Noland (Hanks) awaits its arrival. There is nothing specifically important about the package itself. Chuck is timing how long it takes to get there. It takes 72 hours and Chuck is appalled by that performance. "Governments are toppled in that time," he tells his Moscow crew as he attempts to bolster their efficiency. Soon enough, Chuck is aboard an airplane that explodes mid-flight and crashes into the Pacific. He survives by swimming to a deserted island untouched by civilization. Surrounded only by a few Fed Ex packages washed ashore, Chuck is alone, desperate, and has a bad toothache. "I avoided dentists, now what I wouldn't give to have one here," he tells Wilson, who is actually a volleyball stained with Chuck's bloody hand print. Chuck etches a face into the blood. Any dialogue Chuck has is spoken to Wilson, so the audience gains perspective on what an extraordinarily insane situation he is in.
Most of Cast Away takes place with Hanks alone on this deserted island. At first, he tries in vain to make a fire and scours the area for anything to eat or drink. There are lots of fish to be had, if he could catch them. The fire will be ample enough, if he could just create one. And the toothache will eventually go away thanks to some crude surgery involving an ice skate that washed up in one of the packages. Hanks was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his performance and it is quite masterful. He spends most of the movie in scenes with himself and little to no dialogue, yet he fully immerses us in his experience. A different actor may not have inspired such empathy and thus the movie wouldn't work.
Cast Away works for the most part, mostly because we see Hanks learning to survive because the alternative would be to perish on this island with the unlikelihood that anyone would ever find him. He puts his analytical skills he used at Fed Ex to use. He studies the tides, the winds, and the seasons. Chuck determines that there is an ideal time to sail away from the island and face the least resistance from the currents, but he has to manufacture a raft strong enough to resist the rough waters. This is a painstaking process marred by trial and error. Four years pass. Chuck is paunchy when he arrives on the island and four years later is lean with a long beard and wooly hair. He can now kill fish with a spear from a distance.
What drives Chuck is his love for his girlfriend Kelly (Hunt), whose picture he keeps in a cave. He frets about having left her behind. Thoughts of suicide crept into his mind and he tells Wilson (and us) about his flirtation with ending it all. Who among us might not consider this a possibly better alternative than wasting away on an island? I'm sure there was a temptation to cut to scenes with a devastated Kelly picking up the pieces after Chuck's presumed death, but the movie wisely avoids them. There is no outside world where Chuck now lives and the movie smartly doesn't show us one.
If you're wondering if Chuck ever does escape from the island, the answer is yes. I'm not giving away a spoiler. This was given away in the film's trailers back when it was released. Cast Away does not work quite as well when Chuck returns home. He reconnects with a now-married Kelly whose husband is, oddly enough, a dentist. Like Chuck himself, the movie doesn't quite know how to behave in the presence of other people. The drama unfolds somewhat awkwardly and ends with Chuck literally and figuratively at a crossroads. Hasn't this poor guy been through enough without having to face the rest of his life in solemnity?
Cast Away is a better, more assured and fascinating film when Chuck is on the island, forced to be resourceful or die. We actually find ourselves feeling the isolation Chuck goes through and it is here when Cast Away provides a unique, moving story.
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