Was All Really Lost?

I watched (and watched is the operative word in this case) a movie, All is Lost, the other nightRobert Redford played the only character and had the only speaking part, requiring him to memorize very, very few, lines.  While I was impressed with Redford’s portrayal of a man coping with an exceptional challenge, I don’t know that I can say what the film was about.  Was it a survival film?  Was it a film intended to explore the results of bad decisions?  Was it a slow-speed action film?  I don’t know. That notwithstanding, the film held my attention for almost two hours, a rarity in my film-watching experience. I enjoyed the film.  I empathized with the character and sympathized with his plight. I worried for him.  When he made decisions, I worried whether they were the right ones. When he confronted obstacles, I wondered whether they were believable, but I believed them nonetheless.

Though I enjoyed the film, I can’t say with certainty that it achieved its objective with me, as much because I don’t know what that aim was as because it didn’t entirely “register” with me.  But I wondered whether I would have responded to the experience as he did.  I wondered whether I have the ingenuity that the character in the film had. But, mostly, I wonder whether the lines at the beginning of the film were connected to the end.

I don’t know. I just don’t know.  Redford and the writer/director, J.C. Chandor, deserve applause for producing a film that, if nothing else, causes intellectual and emotional confusion (at least in me).

There will be more film on my agenda for 2015; it’s time I got out a bit more. In the figurative sense; I prefer staying in with Netflix.

About John Swinburn

"Love not what you are but what you may become."― Miguel de Cervantes
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