The phrase All Is Lost suggests sorrow, especially with Robert Redford looking stolid, grizzled, and still-got-it golden on the poster. Could this near-silent, you-are-there survival story be one of Redford’s yawps of boomer doom? Another criticism, similar to The Company You Keep, regarding the awareness that the society we appeared to be building to in the late 1960s turned out to be this one, compromised by money and cynicism, where the kids, if you can get their attention for even a moment, are all, “The Sundance Kid?” “What was his superpower?”
Sundance did have one, actually: he held the culture together during the Nixon crackdown, primarily with rumpled handsomeness.
Fortunately, the personal, somewhat horrifying All Is Lost is far superior, in part because Redford is just required to hold himself together. (America will do well on its own.) The end result is what no Redford picture has been in many filmgoers’ lifetimes: a genuine nail-biter, meticulously crafted and totally engaging, elemental in its simplicity. Redford stars with just a yacht, a lifeboat, a shipping crate, a million miles of merciless ocean, and what may be the film’s most resilient hairpiece. He speaks barely four or so times during the film, with the exception of a brief voiceover in the first few seconds. For once, he is not the smooth ruler of everything around him; he is simply a man trying not to die.
Of course, he’s extremely wealthy and capable. In the beginning, Redford’s character — hereafter referred to as Redford — awakens on his fancypants boat to discover that even the insulated rich can suffer from globalization — in this case, in the form of one of those one-size-fits-all shipping crates, a floating boxcar that has spilled off a trawler and cracked Redford’s yacht. The rest of the film depicts him simply dealing with this. His radio is dead, the boat is sinking, and the nearest shipping lanes are hundreds of miles away. Even if he could get there, what are the chances that one of today’s overcrowded, understaffed cargo ships would notice him? (International shipping has lost its essence since the 1960s!)
Director J.C. Chandor excels in process, which is something Hollywood isn’t very good at anymore. All Is Lost is simply a person acting clearly and meaningfully in a cramped, risky space. In a way, it’s an earthbound version of Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity, with one unfriendly element replaced by another and desperate people summoning every ounce of power and resourcefulness from within themselves to survive.
Chandor deftly navigates the complicated cause-and-effect of maritime life: It’s always evident what each rope Redford holds is tied to, and there’s much strain when the actor clambers from bow to stern; those surfaces are slick, the waves unpredictable, and the water sickeningly dark. As the water gushes in and the yacht lists at unsettling angles, the simplest activities become thrilling, and the most difficult ones — shimmying up the mast or fishing in shark-infested waters — are hold-your-breath moments.
The film is, in one way, more audacious than Cuaron’s: We barely get a few glimpses about this yachtman’s pre-crisis existence, and there’s no horrific past, which Hollywood producers believe makes people more relatable. He has no George Clooney to cheer him on, no volleyball to unload his guts to, and no flashbacks to take a break from. That’s perfectly fine. Redford, as always, owns the screen and becomes more moving as the camera focuses on his face. He becomes weatherbeaten, pinking in the sun, his lips chafing, and his voice, the few times you hear it, as dry as crumbling snakeskin. The urge to survive is moving enough – here it is, stripped down to its essence, and if you can’t bring yourself to care about something so simple, the problem is you, not the movies.
Redford gets harrowed, but not as badly as he could have. Because the film achieves its considerable suspense through painstaking verisimilitude, with its boats and seas always behaving as boats and seas do, it’s somewhat disappointing that, when Redford’s old-man character is dunked in a storm, his improbable old-man hair isn’t washed away; it’s the only thing in the film that doesn’t seem credible.
I’m not suggesting that the septuagenarian hunk’s Kennedy-thick mop was augmented; perhaps he actually did win the genetic lottery in every way. If it is his natural hair, God bless him, but wouldn’t the picture have been more striking – and this man’s plight far more dire — if they had given Redford a mortal’s bald head? You can’t truly say that all is lost when you’re almost 80 years old and still have that.
