Against the Sun

The Pacific, 1942. An American aircraft loses its way on a mission and ditches when the fuel runs out. The crew of three survive in an inflatable raft with no water, no food and no compass. They stay at sea for thirty four days. Brian Falk directs. Garret Dillahunt, Tom Felton and Jake Abel play the crew. The story is real. A crew of three under Harold Dixon went down in the Pacific in 1942 and reached an island by rowing, collecting rainwater and catching fish, and the case was widely reported in America at the time. The form rests on constraint. For nearly the whole running time there are three men and a raft on screen: no other location, no flashbacks, no enemy. The engine of the narrative is not an external threat but hunger, sun and time. That is both its strength and its limit. It was made cheaply and genuinely shot at sea, and the actors visibly deteriorate over the course of it. The film makes no political claim; nothing is said about the war at all and the subject is survival alone. Who it is for: viewers who like survival films drawn from real events and single location narrative. Who it is not for: very little happens and the characters' histories are underwritten. It is static for long stretches.