Cast Away (2000)
It is a rare thing for an actor to enjoy such willingness from the audience that they can hold its attention, alone, for great swathes of screen-time. Of course, such projects require great writing and direction, but without a person at its centre that can engender unconditional acceptance and compassion, the story will fall entirely flat.
While Cast Away is not technically a single-person story, it is defined entirely by its middle act, which sees FedEx Systems Engineer Chuck Noland (Hanks) survive a terrible plane crash, which results in him being washed up on a desert island, alone. What follows is essentially a beautiful depiction of the process of grief, as Chuck struggles to process the sudden life-altering event. We see him try to cling to the last vestiges of his life back home, working on the assumption that he will soon be rescued. When no rescue is forthcoming, he slowly begins to let go of his previous existence, and creates a new one, out of necessity.
Years pass, and we find that Chuck has released the trappings of modern life, and has become competent in his new situation. While he is able to fend for himself physically, however, it is intense loneliness that is his true nemesis. He makes himself a friend – Wilson – using a ball that washed up in a FedEx package, and has many conversations with the inanimate object.
As is often the case with a Tom Hanks performance, there is one moment that truly drives home the internal life of the character. As the actor has carefully crafted a symphony of characterization, there is a moment at which that symphony reaches a crescendo, and its true breadth is revealed. In Cast Away, that moment comes when a glimmer of hope of rescue revisits Chuck, and he decides to build a raft using items that have washed up over the years. He realizes he needs rope, however, and we see him remember where he left it.
Talking to Wilson, it becomes clear that there is a great length of rope at the top of a cliff, but that he does not want to return there. It soon becomes clear that he had tested a method of suicide, before changing his mind. Chuck is overcome with emotion as he returns to the cliff-top spot and reels in a makeshift body that he hung from a tree. It is a relatively brief moment that reveals the true depth of the pain Chuck has endured during his years of isolation, and it is this moment that makes it all the more heartbreaking when he loses Wilson on choppy seas as he makes his last desperate attempt to escape the island.
