Robert Redford plays a man alone aboard a yacht in the Indian Ocean. When his boat is damaged, he faces a dangerous fight for survival. (Photo courtesy Lionsgate)
All is Lost is a movie filled with mystery and metaphor. The film’s lead (and only) character played by Robert Redford is unnamed. There’s no back story to why he’s in a yacht sailing in the Indian Ocean. And the sea is a constant ominous and dangerous landscape during his fight for survival.
It’s not an adventure story or an action movie. Sure, it’s a nail biter with lots of tension. But it’s largely a poetic allegorical movie about a man’s struggle to endure after everything goes wrong.
When a shipping container rams into his yacht, he’s able to patch up the boat. But the electronic equipment system is damaged. There’s no way to communicate for help. Because the equipment isn’t working, he doesn’t know there’s a storm coming until it’s too late to sail away from it.
After the storm batters his boat, he’s eventually left with no alternative but to flee in an escape raft. And things get worse. He discovers his drinking water has been contaminated. He devises a plan to get some water from condensation. But his only hope for survival is to drift to a shipping lane on the ocean — where massive ships bring goods across the ocean. Maybe he’ll be rescued there.
There are fewer than 30 or 40 words said in the film. Redford convincingly tells a story through his actions and his expressions. It’s a landmark in acting and should have earned him an Academy Award.
Redford, 77, did many of his own stunts in All is Lost. Here he sits on the mast of the ship when he realizes a storm is approaching. (Photo courtesy Lionsgate)
Oscar snubs happen every year. The Academy Awards are a popularity contest — and more often than they should be, a result of marketing campaigns. But sometimes there are performances that are so good they can’t be overlooked. And Redford’s acting in this movie should have been one of those cases.
It’s one of the worst Oscar snubs in recent years. He carries the entire movie on his own, conveys what he’s doing without dialogue, and still performs physical action and stunts that very few seventysomething actors could handle.
Another strength of the movie is that it can be interpreted several different ways. Here are four ways to look at what it means:
1. Confronting Mortality
The journey could be a man forced to confront his looming mortality. It appears that he’s somewhat wealthy, is used to a certain degree of material success and is a loner – or at least on a lonely voyage. But the movie shows all of his comforts don’t make him immune from the threat of death.
One of the strengths of All is Lost is that it can be interpreted as a metaphor on several different themes. One of them is mortality, which Redford faces on the ocean when things go from bad to worse. (Photo courtesy Lionsgate)
And at his darkest moments, he realizes death is a reality. His earthly protections are stripped away. And we see him go through stages similar to the dying process. It leads him into some harrowing emotional places — and the filmmaker leaves it up to us what to make of the ambiguous ending.
2. Don’t fool with mother nature
This is a man used to relying on technology. Too dependent upon it, we realize.
When a shipping container rams into his boat, the worst part isn’t the water that comes in. Redford’s character can fix that. The problem is is that the communication system he’s used no longer works. He can’t get help. And he can’t receive information. So he’s unprepared for the severity of the situation.
He breaks open a kit, takes out a sexton and learns how to use it. But he’s inexperienced. It reminds me of the movie Into the Wild where Christopher McCandless finds himself unprepared for the wilderness.
But maybe he just wasn’t thinking as clearly as he could have. That’s another thing about the mightiness of Mother Nature: it can confuse us, disorient us, make us panic. We can forget how mighty a force nature is until it invades our illusion of security, safety and control.
3. The threat of globalization
Robert Redford’s character, (simply referred to “Our Man” in the credits), finds his ship flooded with water. A shipping container transporting cheap goods across the ocean damaged the boat. (Photo courtesy Lionsgate)
The effects of globalization are there right from the beginning. A shipping container that apparently fell off a huge boat used to transport cheap goods — in this case sneakers — badly damages Redford’s boat.
Is the movie a metaphor for how globalization makes all us versions of Redford’s character? We don’t know when we too will be struck by the effects of a globalized economy. Maybe our secure routines too will one day be disrupted by globalization. The indifference of the huge boats going through with their goods shows that globalization is a massive force that doesn’t notice the people it leaves behind.
It’s a reminder that we’re not just living in a permanent bad/stagnant economy in a post bailout era. We’re also living in an era of globalization which relentlessly displaces and destroys people in the same way Redford’s boat is damaged.
4. The regrets of an aging man
In literature and in spiritual writings, the sea has been a metaphor for a ferocious force that disrupts ordinary life. Think of The Book of Jonah in The Bible, the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” or The Old Man and the Sea. Stability easily turns into chaos when the sea turns wrathful.
So what’s the source of the disruption to this sailor’s life?
Redford’s character writes a note at a critical point in the movie. This is what it says:
“I’m sorry. I know that means little at this point, but I am. I tried. I think you would all agree that I tried. To be true, to be strong, to be kind, to love, to be right, but I wasn’t.”
We know he’s married because he has a wedding ring on. So perhaps his sea voyage had something to do with his marriage being in a crisis. And who was the “all’ he refers to? Does that mean other members of his family? Perhaps the boat trip was a time away to reflect on his regret for something. And the cruel and barren sea is a metaphor for the damage he’s done to himself and others.
Here’s the trailer for ‘All is Lost’:
