TIME’S WASTING: CHUCK NOLAND (TOM HANKS) LEAVES A MESSAGE FOR FUTURE REFERENCE IN CAST AWAY..

I complained last August when his What Lies Beneath came out that director Robert Zemeckis shows contempt for his audience by what he routinely allows to be revealed in trailers for his films. Zemeckis, predictably, paid me no never mind. And if anything, the trailers for his current Cast Away reveal even more. As a result, I shall proceed under the assumption that you are aware of all the considerable plot details Zemeckis has already disclosed in advertisements for his film. A man is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island, somehow manages to survive and years later returns home in hopes of jump-starting the life he left behind. I was so irritated by knowing all this before venturing in to see Cast Away that I hardly expected to emerge admiring the film. But that’s exactly what happened.

  Written by William Broyles, Cast Away is the story of Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks), a field troubleshooter for Federal Express. Based at the company’s Memphis headquarters, Chuck jets all over the world to streamline the operations of local offices. We first meet him as he tries to shape up the efforts of employees in Moscow. Chuck is good at his job, and he’s almost fanatically dedicated to it. As a result, however, he’s gone from Memphis a disproportionate amount of the time and thus able to enjoy the company of longtime girlfriend Kelly Frears (Helen Hunt) a lot less than he would like. On the fateful Christmas Eve of 1995, Chuck and Kelly hurriedly exchange their gifts so that Chuck can head off to some unidentified trouble spot in the South Pacific. He never gets there. A storm sends the FedEx jet far off course and eventually smacks it into the sea. Chuck is the only survivor. And after determining that he’s utterly alone on a tiny atoll, he also concludes that search parties will never find him. Like Robinson Crusoe before him, but with considerably fewer supplies and without the help of Friday, Chuck will have to decide whether to fight for life or surrender to a bitter fate. That battle will necessarily be waged on a daily basis and will not end even when he’s rescued.

  It would have been nice had Broyles’ script better accounted for the urgency (or lack thereof) of Chuck’s Christmas Eve flight. We get the point that he’s a workaholic who has fairly routinely put job above Kelly. But we don’t know if particularly extenuating circumstances adhere to this assignment or if Chuck really has any choice. Comparably, we don’t know how to read an interaction with a co-worker whose wife is seriously ill. Shortly before boarding the doomed plane, Chuck tells his friend of a specialist who might be able to help. Are we to read this suggestion as somehow callous? Upon their reunion four years later, when Chuck learns that the wife has died, he seems to fault his earlier behavior. But I couldn’t figure out why. Little details during Chuck’s long fight for survival don’t ring quite true, either. After Chuck manages to build a fire, why does he still eat fish raw? When the body of one of the FedEx pilots washes ashore, we readily understand why Chuck would appropriate the man’s shoes before burying him. What we don’t understand is why he doesn’t scavenge every stitch the man has on. Shirts and pants are in short supply. And that leather belt might well prove invaluable.

  My most enduring dissatisfactions with Cast Away, though, have to do with Zemeckis’ characteristic disregard for his audience. On two occasions when the action speaks perfectly fine for itself, the director cranks up the score to make sure we don’t miss the moment’s emotional intensity. The intrusive music has the opposite of its intended effect; it pulls us out of the scene rather than situating us in it. Worst of all, Zemeckis just can’t leave well enough alone. He absolutely should have ended the film seven to 10 minutes before he does. Everything that happens after Kelly and Chuck talk in the garage behind her house is an unfortunate mistake.

  Still, on the whole, this film works. The details of Chuck’s struggle for survival are absolutely gripping: his frenzy in trying to crack open a coconut, his collecting dew drops for water, his desperate attempts to build a fire, his unspeakable frustration at spotting the lights of a ship passing somewhere in the dark, miles beyond the reach of his futile cries.

  Broyles and Zemeckis bring the brush stroke of genuine art to sundry places in this mainstream entertainment. A company man at his core, Chuck collects and stores the FedEx packages that wash up on his barren beach. Ultimately desperate for tools to survive, Chuck eventually appropriates the packages for his own use and, in so doing, becomes a different person. Chuck is a man who has been driven by the clock, by the need to deliver on time. His standard lecture to FedEx employees harps upon the preciousness of fleeting time. But until Chuck is marooned, he fails to grasp the human connection that makes time so important. Only in an environment where time has no meaning does he truly understand its preciousness.

  My abiding admiration for this film, though, is situated in its theme: life is unfair, sometimes brutally so. Chuck Noland is by no means a perfect man. He is certainly short-sighted in placing so much emphasis on his work and so insufficiently little on his private life. But Chuck is a decent person. He’s responsible, and he’s caring. What happens to him is not the result of his own actions. One dark night, everything simply changes for the worse. For others the catastrophe may be the death of a loved one, the sudden onset of disease, the loss of a job. Chuck’s circumstance is simply a naked example of any such stroke of misfortune. The world changes, and thereafter it will never be the same again. Chuck’s choices are those of anyone face to face with despair: fight to live or surrender and die. Other critics have complained about the film’s denouement in his reunion with Kelly, but I think this passage, even though carried out too far, is essential. The existential dilemma does not abate when crisis gives way to everyday, for death is always as close as a fistful of pills, as accessible as a razor and a hot bath.