All Is Lost 12A.)
Directed by J.C. Chandor.
Starring Robert Redford. 105 mins.
Even at the grand old age of 77, Robert Redford hasn’t started talking to himself which, in a film where he is the only figure on screen for the entire running length, is a mixed blessing. Redford is a solo sailor in the middle of the Indian Ocean trying to get back to safety after the hull of his tiny yacht is breached by an abandoned steel container full of trainers.
Chandor’s script cuts away all the excess to leave only the simple, stark mechanics of a man trying to avoid death. There’s no back story, flashbacks, no voiceover apart from an opening monologue, no sentiment and no context. (I wish Gravity had been this raw but I guess the Bothers Warners would offer up $600 million reasons why it is fine as it is.) It is a daring piece of cinema but the daring doesn’t generate much electricity. It’s a pedestrian existentialism.
I suspect this is partly down to Redford - he’s too old, too unyieldingly iconic, too Robert Redford. Iconic is an overused adjective but it is unavoidable for Redford. While the method boys from the generation behind him – Pacino, De Niro, Hoffman – have all been diminished by the passing of time, Redford has retained all his haughtier, all the aloof grandeur of his stardom.
Even when facing certain death he stays resourceful and practical; even his despair is stoic. In an interview around the time of Sundance Festival in London he mentioned than Chandor was the first director to have been nurtured by Sundance to have cast him in a film but it’s really no wonder he hasn’t been given the Tarantino reinvention. Chandor chucks wind and rain and waves at him and even that barely dents the Redford edifice.
Of course, at his age it is an impressive physical feat just to be able to pretend to be a solo yachtsman and Chandor renders the struggle almost completely realistic (though the occasional shot that looks computer rendered does really harm it.) There’s no vitality to his struggle, he just seems to be pottering about, wearily going through his chores. When his already stricken ship is hit by a mighty storm Redford is up and down the stairs from his cabin to the deck to attend to some task and each time he has to dismantle and replace the water barrier, take off or put back on his waterproof clothing As it goes on the sequence generates a comic dynamism – he’s like Ronnie Corbett in the Four Candles sketch.
Directed by J.C. Chandor.
Starring Robert Redford. 105 mins.
Even at the grand old age of 77, Robert Redford hasn’t started talking to himself which, in a film where he is the only figure on screen for the entire running length, is a mixed blessing. Redford is a solo sailor in the middle of the Indian Ocean trying to get back to safety after the hull of his tiny yacht is breached by an abandoned steel container full of trainers.
Chandor’s script cuts away all the excess to leave only the simple, stark mechanics of a man trying to avoid death. There’s no back story, flashbacks, no voiceover apart from an opening monologue, no sentiment and no context. (I wish Gravity had been this raw but I guess the Bothers Warners would offer up $600 million reasons why it is fine as it is.) It is a daring piece of cinema but the daring doesn’t generate much electricity. It’s a pedestrian existentialism.
I suspect this is partly down to Redford - he’s too old, too unyieldingly iconic, too Robert Redford. Iconic is an overused adjective but it is unavoidable for Redford. While the method boys from the generation behind him – Pacino, De Niro, Hoffman – have all been diminished by the passing of time, Redford has retained all his haughtier, all the aloof grandeur of his stardom.
Even when facing certain death he stays resourceful and practical; even his despair is stoic. In an interview around the time of Sundance Festival in London he mentioned than Chandor was the first director to have been nurtured by Sundance to have cast him in a film but it’s really no wonder he hasn’t been given the Tarantino reinvention. Chandor chucks wind and rain and waves at him and even that barely dents the Redford edifice.
Of course, at his age it is an impressive physical feat just to be able to pretend to be a solo yachtsman and Chandor renders the struggle almost completely realistic (though the occasional shot that looks computer rendered does really harm it.) There’s no vitality to his struggle, he just seems to be pottering about, wearily going through his chores. When his already stricken ship is hit by a mighty storm Redford is up and down the stairs from his cabin to the deck to attend to some task and each time he has to dismantle and replace the water barrier, take off or put back on his waterproof clothing As it goes on the sequence generates a comic dynamism – he’s like Ronnie Corbett in the Four Candles sketch.
