Cast Away (2000): A Modern

Cast Away (2000): A modern Robinson Crusoe

The choice of the protagonist Chuck Noland's profession in the film Cast Away is very deliberate. The film unfolds the tale of the FedEx executive's life on a deserted island, after his plane crashes into the ocean, leaving him the sole survivor in the midst of uncharted waters. FedEx is a company that addresses the modern world's obsession with time and speed. At the beginning of the film, the fanatically dedicated Federal Express employee has been working in Moscow and Asia, trying to eliminate every last bit of waste from the supply chain of the company. He is pasty and overweight, but doesn't care -- all that matters is his job. Before his fateful flight, his life is secure, and he confidently tells his fiancee he will see her when he returns.

Chuck's fiancee Kelly Frears is similarly time-obsessed. She regrets how much Chuck's schedule takes him away from her, but gives Chuck her grandfather's pocket watch as a Christmas present, when he gives her an engagement ring. The plane crash forces the protagonist to slow down, and concentrate on the most essential elements of life. Suddenly, Chuck is without a schedule, without any sense of time or future, and his only duty is to survive. He has no one to please but himself. His only relationship on the island is with a volleyball on which he paints a face and names Wilson, after the company that manufactured it. He talks to himself, and no one answers back when he cries out for aid, except the echo of his own voice. He is entirely reliant upon his inner life and outer strength for survival, and the last vestiges of his previous life, a few FedEx packages that wash up upon the shore.

Chuck is eventually rescued, but he is a changed man. As an employee for FedEx, he was responsible for connecting people all over the world, but he was never emotionally connected to the really important things in life. Before, he would prefer to be on a plane than relaxing in a tropical island paradise or by the side of his fiancee. However, when forced into a state of total self-reliance his efforts at survival become impressive -- he is forced to draw upon long-lost knowledge from boyhood so he fish, make a shelter, obtain drinkable water, forge a knife from a stone, and crack coconuts. He even performs makeshift dentistry on himself with a stray ice skate from one of the FedEx packages. Most of the goods he has, however, look meaningless in the face of the realities of raw nature.

Eventually, Chuck attempts a daring escape, and only barely survives his attempt to sail to safety. He has given up, but is serendipitously discovered by a passing cargo ship. Chuck returns to civilization emotionally stronger, with his priorities in better order. However, he re-enters a world that believed he was dead for many years. For many years, his main thoughts were focused only on survival and escape: now he must learn how to deal with the complexities of human emotion once again.

Chuck discovers that Kelly is married and has a family. He believed he would never see her again: now he loses her again, to her new life. Also, he is no longer the time-focused man to whom she gave a pocket watch. Kelly means more to him than ever before. She still obviously cares for him, but does not want to disrupt her entire life and begin where they 'left off.' Either way, things can never be as they 'once were.' Chuck is filled with a great sense of loss, as he feels as if he has lost Kelly twice in his life, which is almost too much to bear. The worst struggle, emotionally, for Chuck is that he knows that he could actually be a better husband to Kelly now, after the crash, than he could have been before he was stranded. Before he nearly lost his life and spent so many years alone, he took human relationships for granted. He was always focused on the next task the next thing he had to do for his job. Now Chuck realizes that the most important things in life are not things, but people. He also has a new-found appreciation for the natural world that sustained him for four years, alone on the island.

Chuck, uncertain as to what do, ends the film by delivering the final FedEx package that was with him on the island. No one is home at the house, and Chuck momentarily gets lost but a woman redirects him. When he sees that the sticker on the package and her pickup are the same, Chuck is filled a sense with the synergy of the world, and feels a new sense of purpose in his life, despite everything he has lost.

The most striking cinematic choice of the film is to depict the majority of Chuck's life on the island in silence. Other than talking to Wilson, most of the film has no dialogue and no soundtrack. The main subject of the drama is how hard human beings must fight to stay alive, when they have nothing but the natural world to depend upon. The film underlines the degree to which we take for granted easy access to food, warmth, clothing, and shelter. One reason it takes Chuck so long to escape is because he has not had to fight for all of those things for many years in civilization. In civilization, Chuck saw himself as supremely competent. Because he had a powerful position, he did not realize how dependant he was on clocks, planes, and his status to give him a sense of identity. Only after surviving in the wilderness does he develop a deeper sense of belief in his abilities.