Not the Old Man and the Sea*

Is it that the Sundance Kid can do anything wrong? I praise Robert Redford for his support of independent films and film makers. There is no doubt he has made great contributions to film as art with his festival. I wonder, however, if that has led many film critics to pretend that whatever he does that "appears" artsy is actually art, like his most recent endeavor All is Lost. In other words, I am surprised at the hype this movie  has created among critics. It’s on the Oscar lists for most critics, and Redford is central to its success. But then again, Gravity is getting as much or more hype and, as I've already mentioned in the post on that movie (see Lost in Space), it gravely suffers from implausibility (as many scientists have already written about in the media), which is what All is Lost shares with Gravity; apart from the fact that both movies deal with a lone person's  struggle to survive,in space or sea. How they go about surviving might be easier to believe for the Marvel-raised generation of movie goers, but to an older bunch, both seem lacking in common sense. 

All is Lost is the story of the 70 plus year old man with his small sailboat on the Indian Ocean. And stop, right there: what is a 70 plus year old man doing in the Indian Ocean, 1,700 miles from land in a small sailboat, with a teeny container of undrinkable water supply? We never find out. His sailboat is damaged when it hits a metal container full of tennis shoes. Stop again: a big, heavy, metal container full of tennis shoes is floating on the Indian Ocean, not sinking rapidly, as Robert Redford’s character, who I'm pretty sure weighs much less, does later on in the movie? The movie is about his struggle to survive. And most people that have seen the trailer to the movie know that I am revealing nothing that the trailer doesn't. That is the story, all of it. This is no Old Man and the Sea. 

Accepting the aforementioned premise, the rest of the things that occur in this movie are so ridiculous as to be rather infuriating. And allow me to be sarcastic, for I believe that is what this movie deserves. The man, whose boat –including cabinets- is made of wood, patches the hole made by the container with glue and some plastic cloth; even though we know he’s got the tools and the wood. He sees this terrible storm coming (by climbing up the mast at a terrible risk) and instead of preparing his boat for the storm, he shaves! Yes, he shaves. When the storm hits, he then gets out the storm gear and tries to put it on, with pretty pathetic consequences. When all is lost, and he must get on a rubber life raft, instead of saving the most important implements when his boat begins to sink, like clean water, a rechargeable flashlight, salt water tablets or even sun screen, he saves a box with a navigating tool (as if!…on a life raft.. navigate his way out of the Indian Ocean?); he saves his pen and notebook (maybe he was a poet?), and a rather big, clean, empty jar which, later in the movie, he will use to write and send (you guessed it) a message in a bottle!! Good grief!

And Robert Redford is being praised for his acting?! By whom, the introverts guild of America?! His face is expressionless most of the film, his eyes more than anything, (by contrast, see Tom Hanks in Captain Philips) and he barely utters a word the whole movie (people usually talk to themselves out loud when in danger, more so people in movies about people alone trying to survive; again, Tom Hanks, this time in Cast Away). He doesn't even cry out for help convincingly when a ship (two, three) go by! Yet his acting is being referred to as "career performance". Maybe it's about his endurance, as an actor of 70 plus years, being pretty much in water during all the filming.

Certainly not award worthy. And this is what is beginning to feel disquieting as the film award season creeps up, that these movies, so terribly unrealistic, so full of nonsense, might take awards away from the realism of Twelve Years a Slave or Fruitvale Station, which really have something urgent to say and have more than amazing acting. Is this to be another "The Artist" year? (Does anyone remember that Oscar winner?).

The audience in the theater where I saw it (an older bunch) were pretty much chuckling at the end of the movie. This movie goer, while chuckling along, left the theater with a rather sinking feeling.

*This post expands on a comment made in Fresh Cuts last week. The Fresh Cuts section (see tab) is updated on a more frequent basis than the posts on this blog.