| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Movie Name | Cast Away (2000) |
| Director | Robert Zemeckis |
| Writer | William Broyles Jr. |
| Lead Actor | Tom Hanks |
| Cast | Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, Nick Searcy, Chris Noth, Lari White |
| Genre | Adventure, Drama, Romance |
| Release Date | December 22, 2000 (United States) |
| Duration | 2h 23m |
| Budget | $90 million |
| Language | English |
| IMDb Rating | 7.8/10 |
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What’s the hit movie Cast Away really all about? According to the notices, it’s about a man who survives a plane crash only to be stranded alone on a barely hospitable island. He’s ingenious. He survives. He gets himself rescued.
Yet the movie opens with a shot of a very landlocked road stretching to infinity on a vast open prairie. It pans to reveal an intersection with another similar road. Crossroads. Is this what it’s really all about?
Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) engages life with the energy and spirit of a winner. A Federal Express executive, he lives his life by the clock. Time is so precious that he presents his fiancée Kelly Frears (Helen Hunt) with an engagement ring while dashing to the airport at Christmas. And it’s appropriate that her present to him is her grandfather’s pocket watch, with her picture inside the cover.
The watch/locket plays a key role in the story. Chuck’s plane goes down somewhere in the South Pacific, and he survives to be washed up alone except for a handful of Federal Express packages that wash up with him. He checks his watch. Time has stopped for him. But the picture of Kelly survives to become his inspiration.
Chuck sets about the inevitable relearning experiences a high-tech citizen must undertake to survive with only nature to count on. Humor and ingenuity carry this Robinson Crusoe part of the story. What becomes clear is the importance of water, food and light. When Chuck finally manages to ignite a fire and builds it into a bonfire in the night, he stands and shouts and beats his chest: “I have created fire!”
More than four years later, when he is back home, Chuck ignites a charcoal lighter at the click of a switch with new eyes. He finds the overabundance of food on a buffet table revolting. And he lies in wonder on a soft hotel bed as he slowly flicks on and off a wall switch providing light effortlessly.
Each time he turns on the lamp it reveals his locket picture of Kelly, whose image gave him the will to survive. But he cannot simply re-enter life where he left off. In the intervening years Kelly has come to terms with her own loss and now has another life.
So indeed, Cast Away turns out to be a movie about personal crossroads, and to drive it home the filmmakers leave Chuck Noland in the final scene at the remote intersection of country roads where the movie began. The camera moves in close as he stares ambiguously into the camera. Whatever the future may hold, Chuck Noland has a new outlook on life.
Cast Away is also a movie about the importance of hope, perseverance and, above all, perspective on the true value of time. It’s a hopeful sign that such large audiences sign onto these values.
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