Cast Away is an old movie but one of my favourites. I wanted to write a post about it because it’s one of those movies that you can return to again and again and still find something inspiring and significant. Note this post discusses the movie, so it contains spoilers.
A (probably too long) summary of the first part
Chuck Noland (portrayed by Tom Hanks) works for FedEx. His job requires him to travel extensively. During one particular trip over the Christmas holidays, his plane goes down. The plane crashes somewhere in the pacific, but Chuck manages to get to a small deserted island by lifeboat.
The island is completely deserted but Chuck has a few resources at his disposal. There are some palm trees with coconuts. There are fish and crab from the ocean. And there are numerous packages that ended up being washed ashore after the crash. Some of these prove to be quite useful, like ice skates that he later fashions into tools. Other things are not quite as useful initially, like a package that contains a volleyball. The volleyball seems useless until it becomes clear that Chuck needs some form of companionship. Wilson, the volleyball eventually becomes Chuck’s friend, the one that he confides in, talks to and even shares his hopes and fears with.
There’s one package that he doesn’t open, one that he decides to deliver when he gets off the island. He has no idea what’s inside the package or if it’s something that can help him, but as the audience we get the idea that there’s something mystical about the package. This idea is reinforced by angel wings that are painted on the box.
Like many of us who are used to our luxuries like stoves, and lights, and stores, Chuck finds it incredibly difficult on the island. Everything is a challenge: making fire; opening a coconut in such a way as to preserve the liquid inside; and dealing with the pain of a toothache. Basic things that are easy to deal with if you have access to resources and other humans are nearly impossible to manage without them. This is one theme that I think Cast Away portrays quite nicely: Most of us often overlook the ease with which we live. We have access to so much, but because we have no sense of what it is to live without certain resources, we don’t fully appreciate the things around us. For Chuck, it is very apparent that things are exceptionally uncomfortable without the usual comforts.
Chuck doesn’t know how long a rescue ship will take—or if one will even show up. He has a watch with a photo of his girlfriend, Kelly, that keeps him going during the toughest times. And Wilson. He has many conversations with the inanimate ball to relieve his loneliness. He draws pictures of Kelly on his cave wall and explores the island. When his toothache becomes unbearable he decides to remove it by hammering the ice skate’s blade onto it. He passes out from the pain after that.
Four years later
Four years go by. Chuck is now much leaner and more proficient at survival on the island. It is at this point that a sheet of metal, from a portable toilet, washes up on shore. Chuck decides to use this sheet as a sail for a raft. The problem is that he only has a few months to build the raft. The winds and tides are changing and he has to get off the island before a certain date.
Chuck has to weave rope and harvest food for his departure. When the rope construction takes longer than anticipated, he is forced to retrieve rope from a cliff top where he previously ran a suicide experiment. The experiment failed but we realise here that the four years on the island was a kind of hell for Chuck. No human contact and nothing to soothe the soul.
To get everything done for his departure is a rush but he does manage it. The last thing he does is paint angel wings on the sails—the same angel wings on that package that he’s still determined to deliver. It seems that there is some part of him that believes that this package is important. He also takes Wilson and the watch with the photo of Kelly.
Out at sea, he has a worse time than on the island. Days go by. Days of storms and heat and rain. Chuck harvests rain water and fishes, but living on a raft on the open ocean is no way to live. He eventually loses his sail. The sail also served to keeping him out of sun and rain, so he’s completely exposed to the elements without it. He loses Wilson too. At this point, after Chuck has given up hope, and we as the audience feel that all is lost, a freighter passes him by. Chuck is finally rescued.
The story isn’t over yet and I for one feel that the last part, the third act if you will, is really the best part because it brings everything together. The first thing that happens is that we find out that Kelly has married. She’d thought that Chuck was dead and so had moved on with her life. This is a little devastating—and not only to Chuck. We as the audience wanted him to get back with Kelly, especially after all the hardships that he faced on the island.
A change in perspective
What is also very apparent in these last few scenes of Cast Away is that Chuck now sees many things in a different light. For instance, he marvels at the amount of food available at his welcome back party. There is some part of him that realises that food consumption and availability is largely excessive. He questions these norms, which at a time before his experience on the island, seemed so normal to him. He marvels at how easy it is to spark a flame with a lighter where he struggled for hours to do it via friction on the island. There is some sense that Chuck appreciates these things much more than he previously had—and certainly more so than the people around him. It’s an emotional part of the movie because it makes us as the audience also realise how much we have to be thankful for.
Kelly
The thread concerning Kelly is still unresolved. One evening, Chuck goes to Kelly to find some closure. Even here, we still hope that they would reconcile but Kelly has a husband and a child. In a sense, they both realise that they can’t get back together. But Kelly does give Chuck his old car back.
There’s a scene after this where Chuck talks to a friend, Stan, about his time on the island. There are quite a few things that are revealed to the audience in this scene. Firstly, we have some glimpse of how deep his sense of loss is over Kelly. We also find out that he’d felt similarly on the island when he’d considered suicide.
Chuck tells Stan that back then, he had a mystical moment where he just knew he should “keep breathing.” There was no logical reason to think that he could get back home or that he would ever see Kelly again—but there was some sort of knowing in him to just continue, to hang on, to wait and see what the tide brings. And of course, back on the island, the tide brought him a sail. Chuck says that even though he’s lost Kelly again, he knows that he should just keep breathing.
The package
When Chuck does eventually deliver the package, we see an interesting serendipitous moment. He delivers the package, writing on it, This package saved my life. The owner isn’t home, and so Chuck leaves. When he comes at s crossroads, a woman with red hair gives him some directions. When she drives away we see the same angel wings painted on the back of her truck. This brings everything full circle. If Chuck actually follows the woman back to her home is left to the audience’s imagination, but we already know that Chuck’s experience on the island made him sensitive and perceptive to whatever the tide brought him. For example, Wilson, the ice skates, and eventually the sail.
The journey was the destination
The ending is powerful because it shows that in everything having gone wrong, it had strangely gone right. It also hints at the idea that there are some forces around us that are working for our benefit. This is not only hinted at in the ending but also a theme in many other scenes. For example, when Chuck jokingly asks Wilson for a light and his furious attempts suddenly spark a little smoke. But we don’t really pay much attention to this because for most of the movie, it seems like everything is going wrong.
Throughout the movie we have this sense that everything has gone wrong. Terribly wrong. Nothing that happened, should have happened. Not the island. Not Kelly marrying. And definitely not the plane crash. Chuck even says to Kelly at one point, “I never should have gotten on that plane.”
But when we read the message on package, and also see the angel wings on the woman’s car, we kind of get the sense that, because everything had gone wrong, it had actually gone right. The crash was the thing that had to happen to bring him where he needed to be. And in the end, the tide had brought him a red-head with painted angel wings on her truck. The same angel wings that gave him hope back on the island. The journey was the destination.