Upon his passing at the age of 89, Robert Redford was one of the last of his generation of movie stars. While his heyday was inarguably the ’70s and ’80s, Redford continued to work well into the new millennium, both as an actor and director, taking his last starring role in 2018’s The Old Man & the Gun. But five years before that, Redford anchored another film from an up-and-coming indie director, which provided him with an ideal showcase for his understated talents.
That would be 2013’s All is Lost, the second film from writer/director J.C. Chandor, who had made a big splash with his 2011 debut Margin Call. But where that movie was quite dialogue-heavy, All is Lost features almost no spoken lines whatsoever, following Redford as a nameless man battling the elements in a harrowing tale of survival. As the only actor on screen, it’s a lot to shoulder, but Redford carries it off with ease.
‘All is Lost’ Is Man vs. Nature at Its Best
As All is Lost begins, Redford’s character (known in the credits only as “Our Man”) wakes up on his sailboat, the Virginia Jean, to find it rapidly taking on water after colliding with an errant shipping container. He’s a competent and capable sailor, navigating the situation calmly and rationally, and for a while, it seems like he might be okay. He puts a crude patch over the hole in the boat and pumps out the water before attempting to radio for assistance. But all the skill in the world is no match for the unpredictable power of nature, which sends punishing storms, massive winds, and a horde of sharks to test his mettle.
Our Man is a man of few words, and watching Redford attempt to solve an increasingly difficult set of problems with very limited tools is undeniably gripping. Chandor doesn’t really fill the audience in on who this guy is or what’s going on in his head, but this only serves to heighten the elemental simplicity of the premise. The viewer doesn’t really need to know much about this guy to want to see him survive, in part because he’s played by Robert Redford, who communicates all we need to know through subtle movements and facial expressions. The haunted look in his eyes when he finally has to abandon his boat is as heartbreaking as any monologue.
When it was released, some critics attempted to find some kind of larger theme at play, but All is Lost resists easy analysis. Given Redford’s age at the time (77), some considered it a meditation on aging, but it also resonates as a meditation on cinema itself. It stars one of the biggest actors of the New Hollywood era, a period marked by innovation and naturalism in cinema. It tells its story in the way that only cinema can: purely through images and sound.
How Redford Anchors ‘All is Lost’
The premise of All is Lost is such that, with a talented filmmaker like Chandor at the helm, it would likely still have been good with another star at its center, but it likely wouldn’t have worked as well as it does thanks to Redford. He possesses the magnetic screen presence of the best movie stars, able to communicate so much without a word. He mostly underplays things, not telegraphing Our Man’s fear or desperation, allowing the circumstances to speak for themselves. When he finally does lose his cool after finding out his drinking water has been contaminated with salt, it might be one of the most well-earned expletives in movie history.
Our Man of All is Lost is just one of many indelible roles Redford embodied over the course of his long career. While it may not be held up alongside Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or All the President’s Men, it might be the purest example of his singular talents. It deserves to be remembered as one of his finest achievements. All is Lost is streaming on Tubi.
- Release Date
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August 23, 2013
- Runtime
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106 Minutes
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
