Cast Away

A film about a man who works for a courier company. Chuck manages time. He speeds up sorting centres around the world and talks in terms of the clock. He goes out again at Christmas. He gives his fiancée a watch and boards a plane. The aircraft comes down over the Pacific. Chuck reaches an island on a life raft. From there the film is almost entirely silent. Finding water, making fire, catching fish and a problem with a tooth. Cargo packages wash ashore. Chuck opens them; inside are ice skates, a dress, video tapes and a volleyball. He turns the ball into a friend. Wilson is the film's second character and carries the need to speak. One package he never opens. Four years pass. Chuck builds a raft and leaves. What the narrative is interested in is not survival but return: the last half hour is about what comes after the island, and that is the harder part. The last scene takes place at a crossroads and nothing is said. The production was stopped for a year in the middle. The lead had to lose weight and grow his hair; the crew shot another film in the interval. There is no music in the island section. The sound is entirely waves, wind and breathing. Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt and Nick Searcy are in the cast. Robert Zemeckis directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes one-person narratives and patient films. Who it is not for: anyone looking for pace; the middle is deliberately slow and almost wordless.