Review of All Is Lost (2013) by Mike C — 20 May 2014

Pretty solid flick. Billed as a movie with no dialogue but there is a tiny bit. Still, pretty impressive to be a one man show, say little, and still make a movie interesting.

Though that is my one strike against the movie. I talk to myself a lot, and if I was stuck out in the middle of the ocean I'd talk even more. On top of that, if some of that stuff happened, well, I do enjoy my profanity.

It's an American movie so that's all I'm going to say. But that feeds into the theme that has worked well in literature. Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea sort of used this theme about enduring a struggle no one else can see (as he did in A Farewell to Arms). That's the mind-blowing part to me: a guy could survive well past what anyone would think, being very resourceful and brilliant to last so long. But if he doesn't live to tell about it, no one ever knows. They just assume he perished as expected. The same goes for anyone who dies in a private manner...did a rape victim put up one hell of a fight and nearly get away before she was murdered? Did the guy in the car crash put on one heck of a maneuver to nearly avoid the crash, etc. Death can be the great silencer, and I suppose it can make great literature/movies if you tell the story that doesn't get told.