All Is Lost ****

A one-man, virtually wordless film, "All Is Lost" depicts an un-named protagonist whose sailboat, somewhere south of India, is punctured by a stray shipping container. What follows is our man's struggle to repair his vessel, stay afloat, survive its sinking, salvage what he can, and reach out for help. It's a heroic effort, and in the telling becomes something larger than just a detailed, very well acted and directed chronicle.

While never dull, there is time in this movie for reflection and questions. Who is this man? How did he get here? Why is he alone? To whom is the apology, virtually the only words spoken, that opens the movie directed? Who gave him the unopened gift that he salvages? What's the story behind the wedding ring on his hand? Does the shipping container say something about commerce and materialism? How could he afford to be on a sailboat south of India in the first place? Where did he learn to sail? Wasn't he a part of the getting and spending world that has both put him here and torpedoed his precarious perch? Or does he stand for those heroes who must do what they do alone? Is he a man faced with a life and death situation that requires thinking, planning, and doing? Is he like us in our struggles to survive our own sea, to overcome, to make something big happen in our lives?