ALL IS LOST

It takes a very bold film-maker, in this age of blockbusters and youth-orientated cinema, to make a film with only one actor on screen for all of its two hours and to cast in that part a man already well into his seventies but that is precisely what writer/director J C Chandor had done in "All is Lost", a very exciting, deeply moving and, in the end, rather profound account of one lone sailor's struggle to survive after his yacht is ruptured in the middle of the ocean by a large floating crate, an act as ironic as it is tragic. The actor involved is Robert Redford who responds to the challenges of the role with a stoic intensity you might have thought him incapable of. (He won last year's New York Critics prize and his failure to be at least nominated for the Oscar is yet again something the Academy should hold its collective head in shame over). It's a career-best performance and also almost entirely silent, (I mean, who's he going to talk to?), which makes the skill with which Redford inhabits his character all the more remarkable.

Of course, I can see why some people might find this boring. There are long stretches when very little happens; the drama comes, not from the 'big' events, but from the simple, almost mundane acts of having to climb a mast in order to fix a sail or from fiddling with a broken radio in an attempt to contact the outside world. When something big does occur, (a ferocious storm, for instance), it's all the more jarring and all the more terrifying. (Frank G DeMarco's superb cinematography puts us right in the thick of it). Indeed, here is a film as rigorous and as unrelenting as a European art-house movie set in the confines of monk's cell except that in this case 'our man', as he is simply known, must battle the elements rather than his conscience.

I'm not sure if Chandor really believed there would be a mass audience for this, (there wasn't), or if it was simply a labour of love he had to undertake but in years to come, looking back on what I'm sure will be a long and fruitful career, I don't doubt for a moment that he will give "All is Lost" pride of place.