By Steven Rea

 

FILM: All Is Lost

CAST: Robert Redford

DIRECTION: J C Chandor

 

It’s hard to imagine being farther off the grid than the weathered yachtsman played by Robert Redford in the majestic, melancholy All Is Lost. There he is, solo on a 39-foot sailboat in the middle of the Indian Ocean, taking on water after a freak accident: During the night, while he slept, his boat struck a drifting shipping container, and a corner of the giant corrugated metal box pierced its hull.

Redford’s nameless mariner wakes up to find the contents of his galley bobbing like rubber duckies in a bath. But he isn’t panicking. He goes about patching the hole, pumping out the water — although, with the electricity out, this is no easy feat.

And the radio and radar are offline, too. He has a manual for celestial navigation, and a sextant, which he’ll have to figure out how to use.

It is as simple a tale of survival as it gets. A man, a boat, the sea, the sky. All Is Lost — whose ending is open to interpretation without necessarily being ambiguous — explores themes remarkably similar themes to those in Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity. The crisis of Sandra Bullock’s astronaut, spinning in a crippled craft in space, is even brought about in the same way, by a surreal onslaught of debris. But where Gravity frames its isolated humans in the vast, zero-g expanse, All Is Lost uses that most primal element, water.

It covers more than two-thirds of the Earth, and our man and his boat are specks caught in its currents. The sun beats down, the stars arch overhead.

How he got here, and why, are questions only partially answered by the narration that opens the film. What we know: he is on his own, and he has left loved ones behind, with some heartache, and regret, and sense of failure.

Redford, his skin as burned and leathery as someone who has spent years sailing, delivers a performance as powerful and soulful as it is quiet and indrawn. He is on screen just about every minute, and lets all his vanity go — a hardy septuagenarian gingerly pulley-ing himself up the mast to try to fix his radar, or dangling by ropes and rigging off the boat’s side, or hunched over a book, a can of food. There is incredible tension in this ordeal, this effort to survive, to find rescue, and Redford makes that tension deeply palpable.

And in the grander, metaphoric view, it’s a predicament we all could find ourselves in, some time, some place: abandoned, navigating existence with only our minds, and spirits, to keep us on course — or throw us desperately off.— The Philadelphia Inquirer/MCT

 

DVD courtesy: Kings Electronics, Doha

 

Coming-of-age drama

FILM: Tiger Eyes

CAST: Willa Holland, Tatanka Means, Russell Means

DIRECTION: Lawrence Blume

 

A teenage girl who’s struggling with her sense of self befriends an enigmatic Native American man who helps her to move beyond a family tragedy and embrace her true identity in this coming-of-age drama based on a story by Judy Blume (who collaborated on the screenplay with her son, director Lawrence Blume).

Feeling lost in the world following the death of her father, 17-year-old Davey (Willa Holland) subsequently finds herself living in Los Alamos, New Mexico, with her Aunt Bitsy (Cynthia Stevenson).

Socially awkward and unable to connect with her peers, Davey begins exploring the canyons around her home and meets Wolf (Tatanka Means). Wolf is a kind soul who can recognise the pain in Davey’s eyes, and his compassion and wisdom helps to draw out the strength hidden deep inside the grieving girl.

The more Davey learns about life, love, and loss, the more she begins to realise just how valuable they are in a world where everything is temporary.

Tiger Eyes is an unusually faithful adaptation of its source material — much of the dialogue seems to have been taken straight from Blume’s 1981 novel. Then why is it that what worked so beautifully on the page comes across so stiffly on the screen? Part of the problem is that it may be a little too faithful of an adaptation for its own good — at times, it feels more like an elaborate book report than a compelling narrative.

But it does have a few individual scenes that ring clear and true, especially the ones involving one of Davey’s classmates. As Davey, Willa Holland is convincing as a troubled teen trying to get a handle of emotions that someone her age should not have to experience in a perfect world.

 

A tragedy revisited

FILM: Killing Kennedy

CAST: Rob Lowe, Will Rothhaar, Ginnifer Goodwin

DIRECTION: Nelson McCormick

 

Produced for the National Geographic Channel, Killing Kennedy was released in November last year to capitalise on the interest in the subject due to the 50th anniversary of the tragic event.

Based on the best-selling novel by Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly with Martin Dugard, the film isn’t strictly about the killing of John F Kennedy at the end of Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle, as we spend a great deal of time going through several of the major events of the Kennedy presidency, juxtaposed with Oswald’s whereabouts and political pursuits that eventually culminated with his taking up arms. 

Such things as the Cuban missile crisis are given quite a bit of screen time, as the film posits that Oswald (Will Rothhaar), a disillusioned convert to Communism, had a beef with Kennedy (Rob Lowe) because he felt that Cuba should have been allowed some autonomy to do such things as “defend itself” by having nuclear missiles aimed at the United States. But the film doesn’t delve deeply into why Oswald fostered such radical notions to begin with, or what might have compelled him to travel to Russia in order to defect.

 

Compelling drama

FILM: Watchtower 

CAST: Olgun Simsek, Nilay Erdonmez, Menderes Samancilar

DIRECTION: Pelin Esmer 

 

The second narrative film of Turkish documentarian Pelin Esmer, Watchtower offers a look at the lives of two lonely strangers.

A compelling drama, Watchtower earns our full investment in the two individuals whose understandable gloom is slowly and sensitively explained. Esmer hooks us with sensible storytelling. Some may not appreciate the open ending, however.

DVDs courtesy:  Saqr Entertainment Stores, Doha