CASTAWAY review

CASTAWAY somehow lost its metaphysical center in moving from script to screen for me.

I love the original screenplay... and the material might very well of best been served heading towards a novel than a theater. The film was quite enjoyable... but in watching Tom Hanks overcome his various tests and horrors... I found myself thinking that he was a bit silly. The reason?

I think it has to do with the idea that I never really got a sense of time passing. When we see the 'FOUR YEARS LATER' card... that felt like a complete slap in the face... We come back, turns out he has worked out a sun chart to demonstrate the passing of months and seasons and tides. He has turned his cave into a mural garden... He has transformed into survival boy. Meanwhile, we miss what has to have been the most harrowing sequence that we didn't get to see... his testing of his suicide method. The moments of tackling that, coming to that conclusion... making the rope to do it... the dummy to test it.... what would that look be like? Film is ultimately a very voyeuristic endeavor.. and missing the moments in the middle.... well, it felt like I was forced to skip chapters.

I also know that the film was originally hanging out around three and a half hours... at that pace.... a full hour longer... I feel the movie really needed that extra hour. As it is now... it feels like... FIRST ACT..... SECOND ACT..... THIRD ACT....

I could see the curtains coming down.. I could hear the shifting of the new sets.... and instead of feeling like it was ONE STORY... it felt like 3 parts of a reader's digest version of the REAL STORY.

The problem with the film now is that it doesn't feel like any real transformation, to me, has taken place other than the physical and the fact that his gal isn't there for him any more.

We needed to see more of his life before... how he never had time for anyone or anything... how everything went half done... how his life was a tangle of incomplete memories and half answered questions... Then we need a far longer section on the island... he doesn't go near mad enough for me.... we don't really see enough of how the ball/persona comes into play... his self-arguements... the crippling of his psyche that commences.

This film could have been a transforming experience, but instead it is merely very entertaining... which isn't such an awful thing. I mean, here we have a rather nice job of Tom Hanks turning in one of his best performances.... Zemeckis making one of the better films of his career... but by no means is this film a masterpiece. HELL IN THE PACIFIC is a better film about being left on an island... or washing up adrift... John Boorman nailed it.

I like CASTAWAY, but it didn't live up to expectations, which admittedly were quite high. This movie just didn't do it for me. It isn't the beautiful and unique snowflake that I was hoping for. I wonder how the longer cuts played... what is missing, because right now I really do feel that I didn't see the whole story. This one is definitely worth seeing on the big screen... heck, I'll probably see it again quite soon... but I wish the film had been directed by Terrence Malick... that was what was missing... that calm, that serenity. The film felt impatient. Oh well.