Why do we survive? What is it that keeps us from simply drowning in a car that has accidentally plunged into a canal? Why do we try to live when we know the odds or against us? We always complain how horrible life is and how we wish we were free of it's constraints, so why don't we just die? Because deep down inside we know there are things we want to live for. What does this have to do with Cast Away? Glad you asked (I'll get to it).
Chuck Noland is a man who lives by the clock. Speed is everything. He works for Fed Ex so it should be (by the way how much do you think Fed Ex paid for all that product endorsement they got in the film?). Because of his devotion to time, and the productive usage of it, he is Fed Ex's motivational speaker. What does that mean? Well if one of Fed Ex's international affiliates isn't performing up to standard, you send in Chuck Noland to get their butts in gear. And man does he ever! Early in the movie we are given an example of Chuck's motivational skills in a Moscow Fed Ex affiliate, which bears the resemblance of a Rottweiler barking at kittens. Needless to say his method works and Moscow is up and running to 'The Noland Standard'.
Chuck is like most of us. He lives in the rat race and has very little time to notice the "little things" in life, or the thought that things don't always go the way we want. Chuck believes in his world of time and speed. He believes that he knows how to save his friends' wife from cancer by giving him the name of a doctor in Atlanta. Nothing is beyond Chuck's control.........for now.
Like most men on the go, Chuck ends up leaving Memphis (his hometown) on Christmas Eve, after receiving another emergency notice on his beeper. His girlfriend, Kelly, looks like she's an old hand at these things. She knows what happens when the beeper gets unclipped and Chuck gives her "the look". When it happens right at the Christmas dinner she sticks it out and rearranges her schedule with his before they have to drive over to the airport. Ever the time manager, Chuck suggests that they open their Christmas presents in the car on their way to the airport. One gift that Kelly gives Chuck is a family heirloom, a clock that belonged to her grandfather from World War II. To personalize it she adds in Chuck's favorite picture of her. Before he leaves he hands her a small package that we can all guess what it contains. Kelly is a bit apprehensive about it since she's been married before and is a little wary about taking the plunge again. Chuck doesn't push her though, he just tells her to hold on to till he gets back, because he will be back..............
I think we all know what happens when Chuck gets on that plane, so all I can do is comment on how amazingly tense the plane crash scene was. This was an extremely well done and almost realistic crash scene. All the panic, fear and tension was right on. Zemekis builds up that panic to a fever pitch, with sound lighting and of course great actors. The most amazing scene was when Chuck was freshening up and the hull pressure is breached. Your eyes lose focus from the chaos that ensues. Before they crash, Chuck is handed a life raft just in case anything should happen, and it does. The plane crashes into the ocean and the cabin fills with water. The interior pressure of the hull is compromised once again by the tremendous weight of the water pushing in from the outside and it sucks Chuck out into the ocean.
Eventually Chuck washes up on a deserted island somewhere out in the Pacific, and here is where the meat of the movie begins. I'm sure many of us have been asked the "If you were trapped on a deserted island..." scenario, but Chuck actually gets to live it. In the beginning Chuck tries to cling to his civilized life by picking up washed up Fed Ex packages along the shore that obviously floated out of the plane wreck. The scenes on the island aren't very attention grabbing, which puts a heavy burden on Hanks shoulders. For much of the movie, Hanks has to carry the weight of the film on his own. Now some might find these island scenes boring and label the movie a failure, others however can be entertained by vicariously imagining themselves engaged in such acts as getting water from a coconut, making shoes out of pants or removing a rotten tooth with only a coconut and a skate. (I can already see the millions of dollars Chuck will make promoting his first book, "Self-Dentistry for Dummies")
Through necessity Chuck learns how to take care of himself on the island since no one has rescued him. Eventually four years pass and Chuck is no longer the same man he was when he first washed up on the island. Hell, he doesn't even look like the same man! He's widdled away into a thinner (Thanks to an all sea-food and coconut diet. Chuck Noland's "Dieting for Dummies" anyone?) hairier man, with long sun-kissed locks and a beard ala Robinson Crusoe. He has also spent those four years talking to a soccer ball named Mr. Wilson, who he takes with him wherever he goes. Now there is a psychological explanation why a grown man would engage in adult conversation with a piece of sports equipment, but who cares? It's easier to just laugh. But what has really helped him keep his sanity is the watch Kelly had given him before he left with her picture on it. It's his North Star, she's the hope that keeps him going, the hope that he'll be with her again.
After four years though, Chuck comes to the realization that it is only a matter of time before he will die alone on this island and he doesn't want that. But the waves that surround the island are tremendously strong and powerful and would flip over anything that came in their way. Of course luck washes in a portion of an old Porta-Potty and the gears in his head start turning and he comes up with an idea to leave the island. But why does he even think of leaving the island? He's in the middle of the Pacific, with God-knows how many miles of ocean there is between him and civilization! Because even though he is stranded on an island, miles away from anything he still has control of one thing: His life. And like he says to Wilson "I would rather take my chances alone out there on the ocean, than to die alone on this island talking to a stupid ball!" Hey, can't argue with you there.
Cast Away isn't a movie about Tom Hanks alone on an island, it is a study of the human spirit, about what makes us live or why we survive even though we logically shouldn't. We survive because we know we have that choice, we have the choice to live or to die. Chuck takes his chances out in the ocean because that's one of his choices, and it's the only choice he doesn't know the outcome of. But even when things turn out worse for him, Chuck carries this spirit with him because "tomorrow the sun will rise" and there are more choices to make and roads to travel and that is as good a reason as anything to keep on living.
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