This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
IronWatcher’s review published on Letterboxd:
This review may contain spoilers.
Watched on Netflix
Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) is obsessed. Obsessed with punctuality, obsessed with time, everything in his life is governed by the tick and the tack. As an executive in the US company FedEx, he is sent around the world to teach the people in the logistics centres that we are all slaves to the clocks. Seconds can make the difference between life and death - and running out of time is the greatest sin of all. And now imagine Chuck Noland being sent to a place where time no longer matters and clocks no longer work. A place where it is no longer about countdowns, reliability and pressure, but exclusively about meeting oneself.
Of course, Chuck would never voluntarily undergo such an (extreme) experience, ultimately because the tick and the tack provide him with the necessary rhythm according to which he functions. However, a FedEx cargo plane gets into an air emergency over the South Pacific and crashes. Chuck, who was a passenger on board, finds himself the sole survivor on a deserted island - and director Robert Zemeckis pulls out all the staging stops: the way he casts this plane crash in scene is simply breathtaking. The oppressive soundscape, the sudden disorientation, the immensely effective montage technique. All this gives any disaster film serious competition. Especially in view of the fact that Chuck promised his partner Kelly (Helen Hunt) shortly before his departure that he would be right back.
Now, for the time being, there is only the sound of the sea and the loneliness of the uninhabited island. For the time being, because a volleyball named Wilson will soon interfere in the action, to whom Chuck unintentionally gives a likeness with his bloody hand. What is pleasantly unexpected about "Cast Away" is the fact that the film is a thoroughbred Hollywood work, but Robert Zemeckis does not tell it as a pure event experience. Instead, he focuses on a man who has to come to terms with his new life situation and no longer has a clock to structure his everyday life. This almost two-and-a-half-hour Robinsonade meticulously traces Chuck's search for food, his exploration of the island, the construction of a sleeping place and any attempts to escape in impressive nature shots.
However, a full four years pass before Chuck is finally able to leave the island. By then, his face is covered in thick beard growth and his plumpness has given way to a sinewy, sun-tanned body. As a pure first-person concentration, "Cast Away" at times displays a wonderfully naturalistic insentience and concentrates on the dynamics within its protagonist, although he often seems a little too commanding. Tom Hanks mercilessly pulls this film (and with it the audience) to himself with a truly formidable one-man show. Rarely has one seen the two-time Oscar winner work more sacrificially, his euphoria over the first lit fire is just as infectious as his grief over saying goodbye to Wilson, the volleyball that drifts out to sea amid the bitter tears of the helpless Chuck.
What also proves surprising time and again is how much time Robert Zemeckis takes to document Chuck's return home. The chances that he would really be rescued were almost hopeless, but through a veritable suicide mission with a self-made raft he nevertheless succeeds. Arriving in Memphis, the first thing Chuck has to realise for himself is that the clocks haven't stood still here. Kelly has a new partner and children in the meantime. Their reunion is all the more poignant because - and here the interpersonal maturity of the narrative is also evident - it is made clear again without mincing words that the two love each other fervently, but that after these four years there is no possibility for them to resume their former relationship. They have to move on, but separately. The hope, however, is that there is a future at all.
