Jack Smith movie reviews:            Date 01-08-2001

Cast Away

Had I discussed “Cast Away” with this group before Christmas, er not? (other unintelligible) I think I did at bible study, Pete, but not here. Um, that has become, that and “The Grinch that stole Christmas”, are the two big money makers of the holiday season. In fact this last weekend, “Grinch” finally fell out of the top ten. It was the biggest money maker now of the whole year 2000. That’s an incredible movie, if you understand what’s going on. But the current runaway, best publicly attended movie, in terms of money, is “Cast Away”. And there’s three ways of writing that title, the way the movie wrote it was, “Cast” space “Away”, you could write it “Castaway” one single word or, you could write it “Cast” space “A” space “Way” and all three of ‘em are relevant to the film. A castaway is, of course, one that is abandoned, on some island. Usually as [a] a result of the wreck of a vessel, of some kind, which he got there. And it is true that the movie deals with a castaway. The movie is about two and a half-hours long.

Tom Hanks, for about eighty percent of the movie is by himself, on this uninhabited island. And there’s long periods of time when there isn’t even talk. Uh, [it’s] it amazes me that the American movie going public has taken to that film, as much as it has. Because the whole “island deal” of the film is not exactly filled with continuous bouts of high energy “shoot em up” car chases and everything else which the American public seems to enjoy. In fact, that’s probably one of the good aspects of the movie. Tom Hanks, is [a] an employee for Federal Express, his job is as a “trouble shooter” all over the world. Wherever Fed Ex has a problem, in logistics, or employee problems, or company management problems. They seem to send him to get morale boosted, to get problems solved, to get stoppages and blockages, in the system, undone. And so Hanks is a high energy level person, always “on call”, always with a cell phone, always with a beeper. And night or day, he belongs to the Company, when they call he’s gotta go. It’s a highly commercialized job, and time is money, and he tells everybody wherever he goes that’s the case. And he has no private life that’s not subject to the calling of his public commercial job.

He’s going to be engaged to a girl, he has been dating, who doesn’t mind his hectic life. Her life is somewhat hectic herself; she’s going to college at her age, for a thesis dissertation. It’s the holiday season; it’s just before Christmas. He’s been called to go to the south uh west pacific just before Christmas. He absolutely promises he’ll be back for New Year’s eve. And he will be around, in the middle of January, for her thesis dissertation. He gets on a plane, Fed Ex plane, that’s a cargo plane. He rides on them, to his destination, and when they’re over the pacific, they run into storms, they run into communication problems, they have [pars] portions of the heavy load shift on the airplane, they’re havin’ plane problems and they crash at sea. He gets into a raft and wakes up the next morning on a small deserted island. It’s got mountains, hills, it’s got plants, it’s got some fresh water, it’s got caves, it’s got no people, it’s got very few animals. And so, there is no other live survivors. And he realizes that he’s probably not gonna get rescued right away because the plane diverted from it’s normal flight course, for about an hour, because of a huge storm. And therefore, “like” he figures out it’s over “like” a quarter of a million square miles of territory that they would have to search to even hope to come up with him. And he just knows it probably isn’t gonna happen.

There are a number of Fed Ex packages that wash onboard the island, after the crash, that had been floating. And to begin with, he seems to collect them and put ‘em in a stack, presuming that as a good employee, as soon as he’s rescued naturally, they’ll want ta pick up the packages and deliver ‘em to the addressees’. So, for the first couple of weeks he guards the package. After he realizes that there isn’t gonna be a rescue, at least unless it is an accident, early. He decides maybe he needs to open the packages up, to see if there’s anything in there that’s gonna help with his survival. And, in one of the boxes he finds a volleyball, which was being sent to someone, made by Wilson. And on one day, when he’s having a particularly bad day, he cuts his hand, it’s bleeding all over, he picks up the ball and heaves it out of anger. When he goes and retrieves it later there’s a bloody palm print all over the face of the ball and he smiles and he takes his saliva and he rubs out two eyes and a mouth. And later on he fastens [gla] grass to the top of the ball. And he’s got Wilson, his “straw-man” to talk to, for his stay on the island. And he talks to Wilson all the time.

He’s on the island, for what he says is four years, that’s things of the world. But, at another time he tells you he’s on the island for fifteen hundred days, fifteen is the number of rest. The first half hour in which everything is totally hectic, in his commercial business, shows you that time is very, very important in that public commerce section. But time just disappears, through the whole slow portion of the movie that lasts about an hour forty-five minutes in the middle. Because when you’re on the island and you’re by yourself, there is no commercial activity by definition, and time has no relevance. (other unintelligible) Had a present he was given by his girlfriend, what was it again? (other repeated) his grandfathers watch, (other unintelligible) yea, was a conductor on the railroad, I don’t even know, did the watch still work anymore, or not? It didn’t work. OK, so it was, going back to the old days, we’ve got a watch that doesn’t work. And he had it, with him, on the island, with her picture in it. (other repeated) Commercial watch, on the railroad, at that time, when her grandfather used it, K. Now at this stage of the game, fifteen hundred is a rest so what you’re doing with the number fifteen is he’s getting a rest from commerce. And since commerce is involved in the public his stay on the island was private, very private, and time was irrelevant and in the private sector all he’s dealing with is the necessities of life. He’s dealing with food, health, shelter, clothing, friendships, relationships to nature. There were no statutory laws, on the island. All he was dealing with was nature. Totally private, fifteen hundred days is more than four years, if you take 365 days as a year, times four, it brings you forty days short of fifteen hundred. So he was on the island, for four, (things of the world), or fourteen, which is waiting for deliverance and sixty, which is the number of man times the law ten and the extra forty days was the probation.

After that period of time he made a decision, and he openly says, “I would rather take my chances, on the water” (admiralty?) “than die lonely on the land” common-law? There’s nobody there, just him, he creates a vessel, to sail out on the ocean to see if he can get into shipping lanes, or something to be rescued. He does what he can to try to provision it. He does what he can to take with him a string or whatever he’s got and hooks, to fish when he’s at sea. He goes out on the sea, and he ties Wilson to the vessel to take Wilson with him. Before he is rescued, an incident happens and when he wakes up, he discovers that Wilson was cut loose, and went overboard. He sees Wilson floating out there in the distance and he’s trying to decide whether to rescue his straw-man or stay with the safety of the vessel on the high seas. He decides to go out to get Wilson, and he goes out as far as a tethered length of rope that he had took him. It wasn’t far enough so, he has to abandon the straw-man, Wilson. And it really cracks him up.

He’s later rescued by a commercial vessel, When he’s rescued; he’s flown back by Fed Ex, to their home city, Memphis, Tennessee. Going back to Egypt as we? Memphis? When he gets back to Egypt, commerce? They hold a huge party for him celebrating the fact that he’s not dead. But they inform him, “ We thought you were dead and we had a funeral for you.” And He said, “What did you put in the coffin?” And they said, “Oh we all chipped in artifacts and things that we had from you to remember you, and buried them in the coffin.” So he had his party, and he was supposed to see the girl that he was going to become engaged to. But he was told, by her new husband, that she was so upset, that she couldn’t see him now but, she wanted to meet with him, and would meet with him sometime later. She not only had a husband she had a small daughter. She later tells him that she never wanted to give up the hope, that he was alive and coming back. She always suspected he would make it. But, the rest of the people around her convinced her it was hopeless, and that she should get on with her commercial life. The evening after the party, his best friend that was really happy to see him back said, “Well you better go get some sleep because tomorrow is a big day.” And he said, “Oh, really what is tomorrow?” He said, “We’ve gotta go down and sign papers, It takes a lot of papers to bring someone back to life.” Scuse me? I thought the living man is standing right in from of him. What kind of papers does the living soul need to breath? None. They’re talking about recreating the straw-man, Wilson. The movie never shows him signing any papers, you don’t know if he did, you don’t know if he didn’t. You’re not exactly sure, what Hollywood’s gonna do about linking him up with his ex-sweetie. I mean this is just so “box opera” waiting to happen. Naturally they’re so in love with each other, they gotta get back together. But if they did wouldn’t that violate a whole mess of laws? And who said that Hollywood is immoral? Hollywood is preaching a very moral message. So they can’t get back together, it’s estopped by her marriage and her daughter.

So the end of the movie is extremely interesting. Because you haven’t seen whether or not Tom Hanks is gonna go back into his commercial life. You haven’t seen whether he is going down and recreating, or bringing back to life, the straw-man, Wilson. But what you do see is extremely interesting. The last scene is at a crossroads, way back in the outback in Texas. There was one package that he didn’t open on the island. He kept and he brought back with him. And he decided he was going to take some time off, he told his workers, to get his bearings. And he decided, “Hmm, think I’ll deliver this package to whoever had sent it. Maybe they’d be interested in seeing it come back.” So he took the package back to this backwoods house, in Texas. And no one was home. So he left the house, and he’s at a crossroads, in Texas now; dirt-road, fences, no trees, no nature, no brush, nothing, not a blade of grass, hardly. Two dirt roads, one with stop signs, the other one a through road and he stops  his rent-a-car there. And he gets out of the car and he’s standing outside, looking in all four directions, at the road. This pickup truck, with this girl driving and her dog in the back, comes around the corner sees him standing there and she stops and gets out of the truck and she says, “You look lost.” He says, “Nope, just getting my bearings. But what’s down these roads?” And she said, “That way, big city in Texas, that way, big city in Texas, south here a bunch of ranches,” That’s where she lived, which was the house he delivered the package to. And then she points the other way and says, “That’s north, that goes all the way to Canada, and there’s nothing there all the way.” There’s no United States; there’s nothing from Texas to Canada, nothing north. And he goes, “Oh, OK.” Se gets back in her truck, and heads south. And he’s standing there and that’s the end of the movie.

When God shuts a door, he opens one. The question is, is he gonna go back, to the public commercial entity or is he gonna go private. That’s what Hollywood is telling you in “Cast Away.” Or, it could be showing that there is a Cast Way to leave the public and go private. Cast A Way, do it, don’t stop, don’t hesitate. What part of what Hollywood’s doing is not totally relevant to what we’re learning, in the legal procedures, in this room. It’s the most incredible metaphor for a movie that we’ve seen, in a long time. One of the things that raises your interest is, is it necessary to abandon the straw-man and accept no benefits of that straw-man, from the public, in order to operate totally in the private capacity because it would appear, in this movie, that’s exactly what they’re tellin ya. It’s very interesting what Hollywood has been up to.

As transcribed by: Majic