What I Watched -- All Is Lost

Months and months ago, I tried watching All Is Lost, which is a movie about a guy who's alone at sea.  I fell asleep.  Imagine that!  A movie with almost no dialogue, soothing sea sounds, and I fell asleep.  Who would have imagined that?

With a little more sleep and a lot more daylight, I decided to give it another try.  Watching All is Lost was, in a way, the opposite of watching a movie with subtitles.  With subtitles, you have to be glued to the screen because it's the only way to know what's going on.  With All is Lost, I was prone to stop paying attention, I think because of the lack of dialogue.  Boy was that a mistake.

It's the process that this guy goes through, of slowly having his lifelines stripped away from him, of trying to save those lifelines every step of the way, of exercising every last bit of his encyclopedic knowledge of his craft and the sea, of taking resourcefulness to a new level, that really makes the movie.  It's what sucks you in.

And even with my initial lack of initial attention, by about halfway through, I was glued.  I was glued as he held it together through challenge after challenge, and glued as he started to come apart.  Right until the very last minute.

Perhaps because there is so little human speech in this movie, the sound effects are especially important.  It was a little bit of a challenge to watch because of the range of volume required, from calm, placid days thousands of miles from another soul to raging storms and crashing thunder.  My other mistake was not to be somewhere with good surround sound that I could crank up to really get the full experience.  Do yourself a favor and make that happen.

The story is simple, easy to tell, so there's not much to surprise you there.  But that's what makes the enjoyment of it all the more impressive.

Bottom line: a surprisingly suspenseful film, and a bit of a risky project which deserves to be rewarded.