Cast Away Once More
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Cast Away Once More
There is a reason why I buy DVDs instead of renting them, and it's not like my father's comments are going to stop me from buying them. His theory is that once you watched a movie, there is no point for you to watch it again. Of course, this is coming from a man who likes to watch anything with high explosives, and doesn't like to watch any movie that was made in any time older than 1990s, or about a movie that is before 1990 either. He judges by the car, and if the car is too old-fashioned he will immediately dismiss the movie as a bad movie and then complain about it. So anything current or futuristic works for him, but not Star Wars of course, or anything that deals with aliens or spaceships. As long as the characters ride on horses instead of cars, he will do the same and complain throughout the movie or simple fall asleep as well.
He is not the kind of movie-companion you would want in your living room to be honest. I remember when my family went to watch an action movie called Eraser when I was still a kid, he sat right under the blasting speakers and fell asleep. Worst of all, he started to snore. If not for the blaring sound of the machine guns and the crashing vehicles I would've slapped him awake for embarrassing the rest of the family like that. Imagine recommending a movie that you really love to somebody, and that somebody falls asleep about half an hour into the movie. It is insulting as it is annoying, and that is why I seldom introduce anything to him, unless it has a lot of guns and a lot of explosions.
Looking at my DVD collection one day my father commented that it is a strange habit of mine to buy and watch a movie numerous times even after I have already seen it. To him, it just seems like an awful waste of money maybe, or perhaps he just doesn't see it. But after knowing his movie viewing habits, I simply told him that he doesn't understand, that's all. You can't really blame a person if he cannot appreciate a film the way that you do, so I wasn't exactly pissed off at his comment or whatever.
For me, it is interesting to examine how the emotions change with every viewing of the film. For example, while watching this movie in this phase of your life you might feel a certain way about a certain scene, a certain shot or a certain line. Once you move out of that phase into another, the feeling during a certain scene, that certain shot or a certain line might change, and that to me is one of the most interesting aspects about repeated viewing of a film. It gives me the opportunity to examine myself I guess, to know myself a little better through the images on-screen.
It's been a while since I watched Cast Away, and it being one of my favorite films of all time I had, all of a sudden, an urge to watch it. So I popped in the DVD and watched the movie. Of course, since it has been so long since I have watched the movie, the feelings involved in certain scenes were drastically different between then and now. Of course, not to forget some of the little details you've missed about the movie the first time round but this time, you caught it and it makes the whole experience radically different all over again(For example, if you take only the first letter of Chuck Noland's name "C", his name then becomes "C Noland" which sounds like "See No Land", and Chuck was ironically marooned on an island in the movie).
Wilson is the volleyball that floated ashore with the bunch of Fedex packages after the plane crash. Out of boredom, Tom Hanks' character Chuck Noland opens them and finds the volleyball inside. During an incident when Chuck accidentally injured his palm while trying to create fire, he grabbed the volleyball out of frustrated and threw it into the bushes. But after a while, he realized that the bloody palm print actually looked like a face, and that was how Wilson was born, with a few adjustments to the face and a name given by Chuck, inspired by the brand of the ball itself.
This time around, the movie reached into my chest and tucked at my heart strings a lot more than before. I guess I never truly realized how tragic the movie is, since I've always focused so much on the survival aspect of the story. Two things kept Chuck alive on that island, and it was the thought of his wife Kelly and Wilson's quiet companionship. There were instances when Chuck wanted to kill himself on the island, but he survived because he always had the hope, that he would one day escape from that island and see his wife Kelly once more. Of course, within the course of four years while he was on that island, Wilson kept his sanity in check by being that 'person' whom Chuck conversed with all the time. So throughout this journey of survival, Wilson and Kelly really played a part in keeping Chuck's hopes up and alive.
Four years later, Chuck manages to escape from the island by building a boat out of tree trunks, he gets back home to Memphis to find that his wife has already married a dentist he used to go to for root canal. Also, his best friend Frank's wife has died from cancer, and 'Chuck' was buried during a funeral with a coffin, a gravestone and all that shebang. Life drastically changed for Chuck even when he got home, and the one thing he held so dear left him for another man. Of course, you cannot blame Kelly because everybody thought that Chuck died, but still I was thinking to myself it would've been easier if Chuck just hated Kelly somehow. But how? How is that even possible? That moved me, that whole scene with Chuck visiting Kelly in the middle of the night. At 3am last night I was smiling to myself, thinking that "Wow, this is...wow!"
Wilson, the volleyball, accidentally floated away from the raft that he built one day after a storm, and despite Chuck's efforts to retrieve him, Wilson slowly floated away into the ocean. So you see, the saddest aspect of this movie to me at that point was that, the two things that kept him alive all these years left him at that last moment, and imagining your pillars of support giving in, crashing down upon you, leaving you...The thought of something or someone important leaving me I guess was just too much for me to take in at that time of the night. I swear, no other movie has the capability of making the audience tear over a volleyball. Damn you, Robert!
I guess what I want to say is that even the smallest details in life - even a bloody volleyball - can mean so much to somebody, and it's sad I guess in a way that people do not take notice of little details in life anymore. It was also sad to see Chuck returning to a place he should be familiar with and yet, so alien altogether. The life that he wanted back so desperately was lost all over again the moment he returned. So what was the point, you might ask of him to escape from the island. What was the point?
It's amazing how inspiring and depressing this movie is all at once, but at least at the very end there is still a tiny glimmer of hope, one that we can all look forward to and smile like Chuck did in the middle of the Texan desert. Because really, like Chuck said, we just have to keep breathing because life goes on, because we never know what the tide might bring. Always.
Wilson floats away.
Chuck visits Kelly Part One.
Chuck visits Kelly Part Two.
Breathing
There is a reason why I buy DVDs instead of renting them, and it's not like my father's comments are going to stop me from buying them. His theory is that once you watched a movie, there is no point for you to watch it again. Of course, this is coming from a man who likes to watch anything with high explosives, and doesn't like to watch any movie that was made in any time older than 1990s, or about a movie that is before 1990 either. He judges by the car, and if the car is too old-fashioned he will immediately dismiss the movie as a bad movie and then complain about it. So anything current or futuristic works for him, but not Star Wars of course, or anything that deals with aliens or spaceships. As long as the characters ride on horses instead of cars, he will do the same and complain throughout the movie or simple fall asleep as well.
He is not the kind of movie-companion you would want in your living room to be honest. I remember when my family went to watch an action movie called Eraser when I was still a kid, he sat right under the blasting speakers and fell asleep. Worst of all, he started to snore. If not for the blaring sound of the machine guns and the crashing vehicles I would've slapped him awake for embarrassing the rest of the family like that. Imagine recommending a movie that you really love to somebody, and that somebody falls asleep about half an hour into the movie. It is insulting as it is annoying, and that is why I seldom introduce anything to him, unless it has a lot of guns and a lot of explosions.
Looking at my DVD collection one day my father commented that it is a strange habit of mine to buy and watch a movie numerous times even after I have already seen it. To him, it just seems like an awful waste of money maybe, or perhaps he just doesn't see it. But after knowing his movie viewing habits, I simply told him that he doesn't understand, that's all. You can't really blame a person if he cannot appreciate a film the way that you do, so I wasn't exactly pissed off at his comment or whatever.
For me, it is interesting to examine how the emotions change with every viewing of the film. For example, while watching this movie in this phase of your life you might feel a certain way about a certain scene, a certain shot or a certain line. Once you move out of that phase into another, the feeling during a certain scene, that certain shot or a certain line might change, and that to me is one of the most interesting aspects about repeated viewing of a film. It gives me the opportunity to examine myself I guess, to know myself a little better through the images on-screen.
It's been a while since I watched Cast Away, and it being one of my favorite films of all time I had, all of a sudden, an urge to watch it. So I popped in the DVD and watched the movie. Of course, since it has been so long since I have watched the movie, the feelings involved in certain scenes were drastically different between then and now. Of course, not to forget some of the little details you've missed about the movie the first time round but this time, you caught it and it makes the whole experience radically different all over again(For example, if you take only the first letter of Chuck Noland's name "C", his name then becomes "C Noland" which sounds like "See No Land", and Chuck was ironically marooned on an island in the movie).
Wilson is the volleyball that floated ashore with the bunch of Fedex packages after the plane crash. Out of boredom, Tom Hanks' character Chuck Noland opens them and finds the volleyball inside. During an incident when Chuck accidentally injured his palm while trying to create fire, he grabbed the volleyball out of frustrated and threw it into the bushes. But after a while, he realized that the bloody palm print actually looked like a face, and that was how Wilson was born, with a few adjustments to the face and a name given by Chuck, inspired by the brand of the ball itself.
This time around, the movie reached into my chest and tucked at my heart strings a lot more than before. I guess I never truly realized how tragic the movie is, since I've always focused so much on the survival aspect of the story. Two things kept Chuck alive on that island, and it was the thought of his wife Kelly and Wilson's quiet companionship. There were instances when Chuck wanted to kill himself on the island, but he survived because he always had the hope, that he would one day escape from that island and see his wife Kelly once more. Of course, within the course of four years while he was on that island, Wilson kept his sanity in check by being that 'person' whom Chuck conversed with all the time. So throughout this journey of survival, Wilson and Kelly really played a part in keeping Chuck's hopes up and alive.
Four years later, Chuck manages to escape from the island by building a boat out of tree trunks, he gets back home to Memphis to find that his wife has already married a dentist he used to go to for root canal. Also, his best friend Frank's wife has died from cancer, and 'Chuck' was buried during a funeral with a coffin, a gravestone and all that shebang. Life drastically changed for Chuck even when he got home, and the one thing he held so dear left him for another man. Of course, you cannot blame Kelly because everybody thought that Chuck died, but still I was thinking to myself it would've been easier if Chuck just hated Kelly somehow. But how? How is that even possible? That moved me, that whole scene with Chuck visiting Kelly in the middle of the night. At 3am last night I was smiling to myself, thinking that "Wow, this is...wow!"
Wilson, the volleyball, accidentally floated away from the raft that he built one day after a storm, and despite Chuck's efforts to retrieve him, Wilson slowly floated away into the ocean. So you see, the saddest aspect of this movie to me at that point was that, the two things that kept him alive all these years left him at that last moment, and imagining your pillars of support giving in, crashing down upon you, leaving you...The thought of something or someone important leaving me I guess was just too much for me to take in at that time of the night. I swear, no other movie has the capability of making the audience tear over a volleyball. Damn you, Robert!
I guess what I want to say is that even the smallest details in life - even a bloody volleyball - can mean so much to somebody, and it's sad I guess in a way that people do not take notice of little details in life anymore. It was also sad to see Chuck returning to a place he should be familiar with and yet, so alien altogether. The life that he wanted back so desperately was lost all over again the moment he returned. So what was the point, you might ask of him to escape from the island. What was the point?
It's amazing how inspiring and depressing this movie is all at once, but at least at the very end there is still a tiny glimmer of hope, one that we can all look forward to and smile like Chuck did in the middle of the Texan desert. Because really, like Chuck said, we just have to keep breathing because life goes on, because we never know what the tide might bring. Always.
Wilson floats away.
Chuck visits Kelly Part One.
Chuck visits Kelly Part Two.
Breathing
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on Thursday, February 08, 2007 at 12:06 AM.
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