Cast Away- a Tom Hanks Transformation

Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

When I saw the previews for Cast Away, I was excited. After reading several reviews, I lost interest. After watching it, I have mixed opinions.

Tom Hanks is an endearing actor who always gives a good performance. I can really relate to him. I feel that he deserves a lot of credit for his work in Cast Away. This is, for the most part, a one man operation. Couple that with the fact that he put on and took off so much weight during the shoot, I feel that his was a great accomplishment. Its like Hamlet's soliloquy for 90 minutes. To be or not to be, Wilson? Wilson is Noland's volleyball friend. Just keep reading.

This was more than a formula survival flick. It sent a message about time and how we use it. Or abuse it. Hanks character, Chuck Noland (clever name! Willie Loman?) is a man married to his job as a FedEx trouble shooter/efficiency expert. He calls Memphis his home, but it seems that his job requires him to be a constant globetrotter.

Noland is ruled by time. Clocks and pagers are everywhere. He can't even enjoy a family Christmas dinner without having to answer to the pager. I spent two years on an assignment where I was on call 24/7, and was called 24/7. The sound of a pager still gives me chills.

Noland is good at what he does. He has structured his world so that the clock and the pager are his friends. Good for him! He is no different than many people who judge their self worth heavily on how they keep things in order.

Helen Hunt plays his lover, Kelly. She is also very busy preparing a dissertation. Two smart, successful people, deeply in love, but so focused on their work. They have to look through their calendars to schedule time together.

So this is my view of Chuck Noland: A master of his ordered world. PROBLEM! Chuck's plane falls out of the sky and he finds himself as the lone survivor on a south pacific island. No clocks, no pagers, and no packages to be delivered on time. He has to fend for himself, learning as he goes. He recovers crash debris, several FedEx packages and one body. He makes good use of much of what he discovers, but he leaves one box unopened. I've read criticism regarding the unopened box. Noland needed to keep that box alone so that he could hold onto a dream of delivering it, albeit a little late and slightly worn, to the addressee. I think this fits his personality quite well. As a faithfull, hard working employee, it could be said that he lived to deliver. So it was as a survivor. It provided him an odd sense of stability or worth. I've heard of stranger things.

1500 days is a long time to be alone. Thats where his volleyball friend Wilson (brand name) comes in. Noland paints a face on the ball with his own blood. Later, after throwing the ball to the ocean in a fit of rage, he cuts himself and replaces the face with more of his blood. There must be some underlying significance to this, but I?ll leave that to others. I'm satisfied that Wilson was his imaginary link to humanity and probably kept him sane, in an insane way.

Late in the movie as he is making rope for the raft he is building, he squeamishly climbs to the top of the highest cliff and pulls up a hunk of wood at the end of several feet of rope. This was confusing to me. Did I miss something earlier? There was no explanation at the time of what was going on other than that he told Wilson that he didn't want to climb the hill again. The scene took place at twilight and the wood had sort of a human shape, so all I could figure at the time was that it was a previous castaway. Later, after his rescue, Noland explains that he had planned on hanging himself at that spot, but being his old organized self, he did a test hang, using the log. The branch that the rope was tied to broke and he realized that he was powerless to commit suicide the way he wanted to. WHAT THE WHAT,OVER!!!! Tell me that this wasn't sloppy editing.

After Noland is rescued he returns to Memphis to discover that Kelly has married and has a child. She can?t bear to meet him at his homecoming so he visits her. They each declare their undying love for each other, and for a moment it looks like they might hook up again. That would have ruined the movie for me. Circumstances had changed and new commitments made, including a child. They had to conclude their relationship. Such is life in an honorable world.

In the end Noland successfully delivers the saved package. He leaves it on the doorstep with a note that says the parcel helped save his life. He stands at a rural Texas junction, literally and figuratively at the crossroads, unsure which way to go. Its as if he is on another island. Nothing around him but flatland in all directions. THE CHOICE IS HIS.

Directed by Robert Zemeckis who teamed with Hanks in Forrest Gump. Like Gump, I found Cast Away tedious at times, but in both cases the tedium bears fruit in the end.

The cinematography is beautiful and the crash scene is spectacular, even on my 24" TV.
143 minutes. PG-13.