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All Is Lost , Reviewed by Sailors: Six Rules Robert Redford Should’ve Known

By Mary Alice Miller

One message of All Is Lost, J. C. Chandor’s excellent film about an aging sailor fighting for survival at sea, is that the hero suffers even though he does everything right.

At least that’s how it has seemed to critics, who frequently note how the protagonist—referred to simply as “Our Man” in the credits and portrayed with Oscar-worthy grace by Robert Redford—[“clearly has the skill” to ply the open seas alone. ](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/movies/all-is-lost-with-robert-redford-at-sea.html)

My fellow sailing experts and I saw things differently, however. To us, it was apparent that Our Man would have fared better if he’d avoided some rudimentary errors. (Warning: Spoilers ahead!)

We’ll share our observations in a moment, but first, a word about our credentials: I grew up competing and coaching on the Long Island Sound, and I learned much of what I know from Simon Karstoft Jensen, who competed on the Danish Olympic 49er sailing team (he currently heads up interactive sailing company Halcyon), and Timothea “Timmy” Larr, a 2013 National Sailing Hall of Fame inductee. The three of us saw the film, which is now out nationally, last week.

Had Our Man followed these six simple rules, all might not have been lost.

1. Never intentionally T-bone a large, heavy object. The action begins with Our Man waking up to water gushing in through a hole in the hull formed by a collision with a stray shipping container. There are two problems with this. First, you can feel every subtle shift on a sailboat, so there is no way Our Man wouldn’t have felt the initial impact and immediately woken up. Second, the hole appears to be above the water line, meaning the water wouldn’t have gushed in like that.

Leaving those issues aside, Our Man’s solution to the problem is itself problematic. To release the stuck container, he drops his sea anchor from its edge to lower it into the water. This would be unlikely to work, but it’s also unlikely the container would have gotten stuck in the first place. Then, once Our Man is free, he returns in an effort to retrieve the anchor and crashes bow first into the container. This is not advisable, as a head-on impact could cause an additional, even larger hole in the hull. The proper technique would have been to approach the leeward side of the container, luffing the sails to slow down, and attempt to tie up to the container in order to retrieve the sea anchor.

2. Don’t leave the gaping hole in your hull unattended. Before returning to the container to retrieve the sea anchor, Our Man jibes over, putting the hole on the leeward side to return to the container for the sea anchor. This is dangerous. The proper procedure would be to position the hole on the weather side so that it stays above water. He also should immediately stuff the hole with a mattress, sail, floorboards, or whatever he can find just to fill up that hole. Then he should start bailing the water out with buckets. Pumping by hand leaves him exhausted. If you are in this situation, once you have the boat under control, you triage—check for other leaks. Did the container hit below the water line? Is there water coming in somewhere else?

3. Never switch to the storm jib in the middle of a storm. The time for that is earlier, when the clouds are still rolling in. If you are caught in a storm without a storm jib, it is best to deploy the sea anchor, and then stay below deck.

4. Never remove the boards from the companionway hatch in a heavy storm. If you have to get on deck, go over them. If a huge wave comes over the boat, you risk flooding the cockpit. Our Man removes them several times during the storm, and the results speak for themselves.

By David Canfield

By Chris Murphy

By Andrew Buss

5. Never make an S.O.S. call when you’re not in immediate danger. Because Our Man makes his distress call after the collision, but before the storm, he should make a pan-pan call, not an S.O.S. call. This call is used to signify that there is an issue on board, but not an immediate threat to life or the vessel for the time being.

6. Never, ever drift aimlessly when you can sail toward help. After Our Man makes the S.O.S. call, he does not appear to head in any particular direction. He doesn’t begin tacking toward the separation zone until he is adrift in the life raft, by which point he is dependent on the current to carry him. As soon as he is able to get the boat under control post-collision, he should point his boat toward an area with other boats that can help him. Our Man instead spends a considerable amount of time sailing aimlessly—were the sails even up? We couldn’t tell. He mops the cockpit. He leisurely cooks and eats. He sleeps. He should be actively sailing toward help.

All that said, we do give Our Man points for safety! Timmy, having authored several books on boating safety, is quick to point out that Our Man does follow some important safety protocols. He wears a hat. He deploys his life raft correctly (though we wonder about the timing of it), and when the life raft flips, he correctly flips it back using the proper features of the device.

More bonus points for Redford’s authentic portrayal of the effects of this kind of disaster on the human psyche. As Simon points out, our man’s behavior shifts from calm and collected to desperate and erratic quite believably over the course of the film, though Simon wishes our man would have yelled at the gods the way they do in old books about single-handed off-shore sailing disasters.

The physical effects are spot on, too. Our man’s skin burns and peels from prolonged sun exposure, and he makes sure to soothe and cover the irritated skin on his neck with a wet bandana to prevent further damage. If anyone in the audience is wondering why Our Man doesn’t yell louder at the passing freighters, it’s because he’s intensely dehydrated.

With so many things done right and so many things wrong, it’s impossible to know if the film accurately portrays the role of human error in a predicament of this kind. If any of us were in this situation—and all three of us have certainly been in dire sailing situations—would we make the same mistakes?

Well, maybe. “I don’t know how experienced Our Man was, but certainly there’s the element of fatigue that effects your ability to focus and make good decisions,” Timmy says. We all agree that, under the conditions of the story, Our Man’s mistakes are mostly believable—especially his largest error, which is his lack of preparation. This is the problem that causes the majority of issues on the water.

Our parting advice to would-be solo sailors? You should know how to use a sextant if you embark on a journey of this kind. The storm jib should go up as soon as you see the storm, not during. And if you are in imminent danger and know there is an area with boats nearby, head there as soon as possible. It could save your boat. It could save your life.

Mary Alice Miller

By Katey Rich

By Anthony Breznican

By Hillary Busis

By Maggie Coughlan

By Ed Zwick

By Eric Lutz

By Richard Lawson

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In September, 1983, Tami Oldham Ashcraft and her fiance, Richard Sharp , were hired to take a 44-foot yacht on a 4,000-mile journey from Tahiti to San Diego. About halfway through their cross-Pacific journey, they ran into Hurricane Raymond, a tropical storm which had been building in power for a couple of weeks. They struggled to control the yacht in 145-knot winds, and Sharp was washed overboard, lost in the mountainous seas. Ashcraft had a head injury, and the yacht was badly damaged, but she managed to jerry-rig a sail and then navigated her way—manually, using a sextant and a watchover 1,500 miles to Hawaii. It took her an astonishing 41 days. She survived on peanut butter. In 2002, Ashcraft wrote a book about her experience, Red Sky in Mourning: A True Story of Love, Loss and Survival at Sea . "Adrift," the film adaptation directed by Baltasar Kormákur , wears its heart on its sleeve. It's not just a story of an incredible feat of survival. It's also a love story, presented with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. 

When Richard ( Sam Claflin ) and Tami ( Shailene Woodley ) meet in Tahiti, she's working in a marina, a girl already somewhat "adrift" but not really worried about it yet, and he is a yacht-owner who wants to sail around the world. Their love story involves jumping off cliffs, random laughter, and a conversation about flowers. There's not much substance to it, and the script (by Aaron Kandell , Jordan Kandell , David Branson Smith —apparently, there wasn't one female writer in a 4,000-mile radius who contributed to this story of a woman alone at sea) is low on subtext. The two speak their feelings bluntly ("I sailed half the world to find you"), with music swelling up on cue. All of this is pretty standard stuff, and forgivable, really. Nobody's looking for intricate relationship subtlety in a movie like this. What we're waiting for is the storm. 

The film starts with Tami lying injured in the interior of the yacht after the storm. The cabin is filled with water and debris. She staggers onto the deck, only to find Richard's safety line dangling overboard. She thinks she sees Richard floating on a dinghy in the distance. Filled with determination to get to him, she mends the yacht as well as she can, pumping water out of the cabin, fixing the sail. She eventually makes it to the dinghy, and—with a superhuman effort, drags the injured Richard through the water back to the boat, and somehow (Kormákur doesn't show us how) pulls him up the ladder onto the deck. His ribs are collapsed, his leg is badly wounded. Because this is a true story, we know Richard was swept off the boat, never to be seen again. So it's not clear at first if they have decided to fictionalize the story, or if she is having some kind of sustained hallucination. 

"Adrift" flips back and forth between their burgeoning romance on Tahiti and the increasingly dire situation after the storm, as Tami struggles to keep herself and Richard alive. It is she who makes the decision to turn north and try to reach Hawaii, as opposed to continuing on to San Diego. It is she who rations out the food. When problems arise, she has to figure out solutions. She hovers over maps, peers through the sextant, makes calculations, all while battling dehydration (and possibly a lingering concussion from her head injury). "Adrift" shares many similarities with " All Is Lost ," the 2013 film starring Robert Redford , with some crucial differences. Redford is the only person in "All Is Lost." There is no dialogue. He doesn't talk to himself, to let us in on his thought process. There is no " Wilson " like in " Cast Away ," a device allowing the stranded character to verbalize his feelings. "All Is Lost" takes place in a vast and eerie silence. We don't know anything about the character, we don't know why he's out there alone, we don't know his onshore life. All we do is see him try—step by gritty step—to survive another day. "Adrift" avoids many of the challenges "All Is Lost" faces head on. 

Kormákur is drawn to stories about feats of survival (" Everest ," "The Deep"), and the sea and its storms feature strongly in his work (much of which takes place in his home country, Iceland). He's on familiar turf. Cinematographer Robert Richardson , a frequent collaborator of Quentin Tarantino , Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone , does tremendous work with "Adrift." The frequent aerial shots of the tiny yacht surrounded by immense ocean are chilling: the frame looks almost existentially empty. There's one dizzying scene in Tahiti where first Tami and then Richard leap off a cliff into a deep pool below, and it seems like Richardson must be perched out in mid-air beside the cliff (and when Richard jumps, the camera follows him all the way down). The sunsets ooze fiery colors, with the yacht in black silhouette in the foreground. 

This must have been an extremely rigorous shoot for all involved, and Kormákur has maintained remarkable control over the images. Shots match, even as they're filming out in open ocean: the weather, the sky, the height and dip of the waves in any given sequence, all maintain consistency. The storm, when it finally comes, is an extraordinary piece of filmmaking and effects. In an interview when her book came out, Tami Ashcraft was asked about whether or not the storm depicted in the film adaptation of " The Perfect Storm " was an accurate depiction of what such a storm is like. She replied, "There wasn't enough spray and the wall of water was a little hokey." There's nothing hokey about the storm in "Adrift" ( Dadi Einarsson  supervised the visual effects). As the yacht surfs up the side of a mountain of water, the entire background of the screen is filled with heaving ocean. There's no sky in sight, just flailing waves the size of three-story buildings. And they clearly listened to Ashcraft, because the air is filled with spray, splashing against the camera. It's chaos. The entire scene is a screaming nightmare come to life. 

There's minimal chemistry between the two actors, who aren't given much to go on in terms of who these characters are. It's hard to "buy into" the Great Love they're "selling" here. But there's a fascination in stories like these, stories like " Touching the Void " or "And I Alone Survived." What human beings will do to survive, facing a Mother Nature who seems to have a vested interest in killing them, is, yes, awe-inspiring. It makes you think, "How would I face such challenges? Would I be as resourceful as Tami? Or would I give up?"

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O'Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master's in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Adrift (2018)

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• Baltasar Kormákur
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All Is Lost (2013)

• User Reviews
• He never wears a PFD/life vest, or a survival suit later on. Interesting survival tactics. Our man goes overboard quite often - and even without drowning!
• What an idiocy to hold your boat with one line while jumping on a container - no secured line, no PFD. Then instead of securing the line, he holds it with one hand while untying the sea anchor from the container (which was minutes ago strong enough to pull the container away). Then he walks both lines back to the boat as if they were chihuahuas. Argh! Honestly, he deserves to fall between boat and container and lose both lines due to rope burn...
• No lever for the manual bilge pump at hand? He carves a piece of wood (probably his flagpole) to be able to pump his vessel empty? Puhleeease.
• I understand his shaving ritual - a last trial to exert some control and composure before the sh%$t hits the fan. He seems to consider his options mostly pretty well, but how stupid is it to start switching sails when the storm is blowing already. The main sail - even when not up - seems to be reefed, but we don't see it really being used, and neither is it ever properly tightened to the boom. This costs him rightfully the mast later on.
• Instead of using a fully reefed mainsail and a storm jib (or the engine) to keep control of his vessel, he just gets sloshed around and can't maneuver at all. No wonder that he gets the big waves fully on the beam.
• He wears only one instead of two tether lines. No jack lines on deck or any click-in points close to the center line of the boat. He attaches himself to the lifelines! Another recipe for disaster. When you go overboard, you almost certainly hang under the water surface and have hardly a chance to get back aboard. Stoooopid. He could be happy if the stanchions broke and release him so that he could make it to the ladder on the stern. But that is probably tied up in a way that he can't release it from the water surface. Another reason to NOT make it.
• Instead of a life-sling system he has just an old horseshoe buoy.
• A hand-held radio would be very valuable when a ship comes right by. Much better than his cheap flares. BTW: Good try to clean his radio with fresh water, but why does he try to fix the antenna connection on the mast top AFTER his radio is toast?
• He jumps (!) without provisions (!) or PFD into his life raft, but leaves it connected, closes the zipper and tried to sleep. If the boat sank, we would be gone, too.
• A commenter complained that the boat had no self steering mechanism which would be necessary and crucial for a single handed ocean crossing. The boat definitely had one. You see the wind vane behind the stern pulpit, and you also see a line around the steering wheel axle. The vane breaks off after the first storm, the remnants are still visible.
• A commenter complained that the boat had no EPIRB, an "Emergency Position Indicating Beacon". Once activated, it sends out a distress signal per satellite to alert coast guards and passing ships of a disaster at sea. I thought I saw one mounted to the stern pulpit before the first storm. But maybe it was just a man-over-board marker.
• Someone said that there was no dodger to stay in the shade and being protected from spray. I thought I saw one - but it was definitely gone after the first storm.

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Yachting Monthly

• Digital edition

New Robert Redford film depicts him as shipwrecked yachtsman

• Dick Durham
• December 20, 2013

He takes to liferaft after container smash

Tens of thousands of shipping containers are lost overboard every year and, as unmarked navigational hazards, they have preyed on the minds of offshore yachtsmen for many decades. Now in a new film, All Is Lost, to be released on Boxing Day, the chilling results of what could happen in such a collision do not make easy viewing for sailors.

Yachting Monthly were invited by film distributors Universal Pictures to a private screening in London of the Robert Redford movie, which has received critical acclaim.

The film opens with an ominous banging sound: it is the door of an upended container adrift in the middle of the Indian Ocean during a flat calm. Then it cuts to eight days earlier with a slumbering Redford, who plays a lone yachtsman, woken by a heavy crash and the immediate ingress of saltwater through the starboard side of Virginia Jean, his Cal 39 sloop.

With water pouring in over his chart table, wrecking his navigation systems, he flies on deck to find the corner of a container jammed in the side of his boat. After unsuccessfully trying to lever it away with a boat hook, he lashes his sea anchor to the far corner of the container and the current drags the 40ft steel box clear allowing it to disgorge its cargo of trainers.

Back down below Redford realises he has no power at all, and therefore is reduced to pumping out his boat by hand. With his boat on starboard tack, to keep the hole above sea level, the resourceful sailor then uses a GRP repair kit, complete with strips of matting and brush-on resin to effect a crude patch. Using a bosun’s chair he puts another layer of glass on the outside of the hull.

Next he tries to dry out his VHF radio and mobile phones on deck, then his charts and finally the main batteries.

With no satellite navigation to assist him he starts to teach himself celestial navigation, and unpacks a brand new sextant which has never been used in anger.

But before he can master the arts of astro, he is hit by a storm, is thrown overboard fortunately wearing a harness and having clambered back aboard suffers sea-sickness. During a second knockdown the boat goes through a 360 degree roll, is dismasted and holed by the falling spar and this time no amount of pumping will save her.

Now time to deploy the liferaft, Redford drifts astern of his stricken yacht, until he has extricated enough stores, fresh water, charts and the sextant and as the boat sinks and night falls he casts himself off.

Now with ever more reason to learn astro he works at his sights and marks a daily position taking him slowly towards an ocean shipping lane. Because the breather cap has been left off his jerry-can the fresh water is contaminated and our skipper’s resolve is almost broken as he shouts one of the very few words of dialogue in the whole film, at the heavens. It’s the word we all of us would shout in that situation!

With sharks now circling the fish he’s catching to survive, the raft needing continual pumping, and a makeshift desalination ‘plant’ crafted from the useless jerrycan, Redford’s plight is desperate.

So when a Maersk Line container ship approaches in broad daylight, Redford stands up in the deflating raft and waves a white flare. With double irony the box ship passes without seeing him: a leviathan navigated by the same electronics denied Redford by a jettisoned container .

The bleak, haunting score adds chillingly to the relentless assault on one man’s battle for survival.

In Yachting Monthly’s March issue, Technical Editor Chris Beeson, will examine the challenges that faced Redford and come up with some alternative choices.

All Is Lost, written and directed by Academy Award nominee J.C.Chandor. FilmNation Entertainment, Black Bear Pictures and Treehouse Pictures present a Before The Door/Washington Square Films Production.

See Dick Durham’s Blog  

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By Maureen Dowd

• Oct. 9, 2013

SUNDANCE, Utah — Maybe when you play Death on “The Twilight Zone” at the start of your career, mortality doesn’t faze you.

“It’s all part of the deal,” Robert Redford deadpanned.

He didn’t think about dying while he was making his new movie about it, J. C. Chandor’s melancholy mariner’s tale, “All Is Lost.” He thought about enduring.

“I’m interested in that thing that happens where there’s a breaking point for some people and not for others,” he said over morning coffee recently in the deserted Owl Bar at his resort here. “You go through such hardship, things that are almost impossibly difficult, and there’s no sign that it’s going to get any better, and that’s the point when people quit. But some don’t.”

That’s also what drew him to an earlier story: his 1972 tale about a 19th-century mountain man battling the wild, “Jeremiah Johnson,” shot on Mount Timpanogos where we were sitting.

“You just continue,” Mr. Redford said. “Because that’s all there is to do.”

Like Mr. Chandor’s talky 2011 Wall Street drama, “ Margin Call ,” set on the day a Lehman-type firm struggles not to go under, the taciturn “All Is Lost,” due in theaters Oct. 18, is an existential horror story about trying to survive the worst moment of your life — in this case a crippled boat at sea — as panic rises.

Mr. Redford has made a career of playing what he calls “intrinsically American guys” going up against implacable forces: He battled the banks and Pinkertons in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” Indians and grizzlies in “Jeremiah Johnson,” a superficial political system in “The Candidate,” the Irish mob in “The Sting,” the C.I.A. in “Three Days of the Condor” and “Spy Game,” Richard M. Nixon in “All the President’s Men,” big business in “The Electric Horseman,” and, his most formidable adversary, Barbra Streisand, in “The Way We Were.”

Hollywood is no country for old men. Yet at 77, the subject of considerable Oscar talk (David Thomson in The New Republic described his performance in “All Is Lost” as “ noble, vulnerable and harrowed ”), Mr. Redford is soaring as the solo star of a movie that evokes the elegiac spirit of “ Sailing to Byzantium ,” by Yeats, one of his favorite poets. Yeats wrote about sailing “the mackerel-crowded seas,” coming to terms with the agony of aging and contemplating how the soul can rise above a heart “fastened to a dying animal.”

Mr. Redford likes to write poetic observations himself. Leaning back in his chair, slender and fit in jeans and Tony Lama cowboy boots, he recited one he had written: “You look up and you realize, what a beautiful day, the leaves are turning and you’re starting to feel confident. You’re feeling full of yourself until you realize you’re drooling.”

He laughed, that great Redford laugh. The thing that’s easy to forget about Mr. Redford, with his serious pursuits and perfectionist strivings, is that he can be really fun. We talked for three hours next to the 1890s rosewood bar from Ireland commissioned by the real Hole-in-the-Wall gang. Sitting beneath a sepia picture of him and his pal Paul Newman glowing as Sundance and Butch Cassidy, he tells a story about fame.

“It’s right around the time where I’m beginning to think I’m a pretty big deal,” he said. At a curb in Beverly Hills, “there’s a car coming with a bunch of teenage kids in it. I see they’re freaking out inside and trying to get their windows rolled down. I step back. I’m ready for it. ‘Robert Redford!’ they scream. ‘You are such an” — here he drops in a vulgarity for jerk. He grinned. “That’s probably what I would have done at that age.”

Mr. Redford grew up in Los Angeles, a wild child breaking away from a remote, hard-to-please father, the real Rebel Without a Cause caught up in drinking and drag races. (He even went to the same high school as Natalie Wood.) Breaking into Bel-Air mansions, he and a friend were the Bling Ring before the word bling entered the popular lexicon.

Bob Redford was popular with girls early, winning a Charleston contest at 13, but the other boys grew jealous and “vicious.”

“Pretty soon it became a regular thing where guys would pass me when I was with a girl and say ‘ARF! ARF! ARF!,’ and I could see that the girls were bothered,” he said. Finally one of his friends explained that ARF was the Anti-Redford Federation.

“I was so hurt and shocked,” he said. “From that point in my life, I retreated into a more loner place. I was then forever shy of going out and expressing myself, and I would do it in my art.”

After his mother died when he was 18, he left the University of Colorado and went off to be a starving art student in Italy and France. The girls he met in Paris in 1957 did not find him attractive; he was mocked for knowing nothing about the Suez Canal and American politics.

“I got kicked in the teeth by Paris,” he said.

He started to read the newspaper, trying to see beyond American sloganeering and explore “the gray area that was underneath the red, white and blue.” Just so, his longtime collaborator, Sydney Pollack, said that the actor’s allure came from the darker shades lurking beneath his golden facade.

Still, he has been criticized for not taking grittier roles over the years. But he demurs that he enjoyed his reign as a matinee idol. “I loved working with Jane, I loved working with Natalie, I loved working with Barbra,” he said, referring to Ms. Fonda, Ms. Wood and Ms. Streisand. “I loved the body language, the mystery, the sexual chemistry.”

Was it hard, after decades as a top screen babe, to spend every moment with Mr. Chandor shooting so close to his weather-beaten face as it was getting more beaten by the weather?

“Well, let’s get something straight,” Mr. Redford replied. “I don’t see myself as beautiful. I was a kid who was freckle-faced, and they used to call me ‘hay head.’ ”

When he turned into a sex symbol after “Butch Cassidy” and “The Way We Were,” he said, he thought: “This feels great. I think I’ll roll with this for a while.” But “out of whack” fan experiences made him withdraw.

“It got harder and harder, and then it got exhausting,” he said. “And I guess the nice thing about getting older is that you don’t have that quite so much anymore. I never had a problem with my face on screen. I thought it is what it is, and I was turned off by actors and actresses that tried to keep themselves young.”

Mr. Redford has always been a minimalist, luring audiences in by seeming “unpossessable,” as Pollack put it. But in “All Is Lost,” Mr. Redford takes that to new heights, speaking only a handful of words, the loudest one unprintable here.

The script was a scanty 31 pages. A character known only as Our Man is sailing on his 39-foot yacht in the Indian Ocean, when a foreign shipping container filled with children’s sneakers gashes the boat, swamping the communications devices. Our Man spends the rest of the film improvising to save his life, learning how to desalinate water and navigate celestially. Mr. Redford, who ended “Downhill Racer” and “The Candidate” with a question, likes the ambiguous ending, which has divided audiences.

He said that during the Sundance Kid’s silences, he would look at other men, thinking, “Can I kill you or not?” But this role was different; Mr. Redford did not bother to think like someone else. “There was so little described of the guy that, of course, it had to be me,” he said. He wore his own turquoise and silver ring and displayed his own stubborn perseverance.

“He has got a conscience,” Mr. Redford said of his character. “Clearly he has a family. He’s not a bad person, but he’s failed in some way. So maybe this journey has to do with him sorting all that out.”

Films about being adrift seem to suit the national mood: “All Is Lost” is one of a spate of movies this season, including “Gravity,” about Americans unmoored.

Mr. Chandor, 39, got the idea when he was living in Providence, R.I., and commuting by train to New York to edit “Margin Call.” He would stare out the window at the sailboats stored for the winter and wonder about adventures never undertaken. His parents had raced sailboats as newlyweds, and he had spent summers in Rhode Island as a junior sailing instructor. He was also thinking about end-of-life issues watching his two grandmothers die. (The film’s yacht, the Virginia Jean, is named after them.)

Then Mr. Chandor went to the Sundance Film Festival in 2011 for the premiere of “Margin Call” and attended a brunch for filmmakers. Mr. Redford got up to talk, but the audio system was not plugged in.“When you couldn’t hear that buttery voice, it was almost like it wasn’t Redford,” Mr. Chandor said. “I started thinking about a film with no dialogue, because it seemed really cool to take that tool away from him as an actor and see what he could do.”

Mr. Chandor asked Mr. Redford about the role, and the star was jolted.

“In 30 years of supporting new artists and Sundance labs and the festival, no one ever came to me and asked me to be in a film,” Mr. Redford said. “Maybe they thought I was above it. And when I realized J. C. was ferocious in his focus and devotion to detail, I thought, this is a guy who I can give myself over to as an actor, which I was longing for. It was like coming full circle.”

The reserved actor with the loner tendencies said he loved working with the exuberant extrovert of a director and teased him about making a film with no chat when he’s so chatty. (Mr. Chandor is still a bit in awe, referring to his star at times as Mr. Redford.)

They filmed on the ocean around Los Angeles and spent two months in Mexico shooting with three massive water tanks that James Cameron built for “Titanic.”

The plan called for a stunt double, “but we get down there and, of course, my ego kicks in,” Mr. Redford said, grimacing. “I started saying: ‘I think I can try that. Let me see what I can do.’ And I realized that my doing that stuff was really a big part of the character, and that it would be much better for the film if he didn’t have to cut and slice.”

He grew up “a California water guy,” as he put it, but was more of a surfer and swimmer than sailor. He’s in great shape from horseback riding, hiking, skiing and tennis. Even spending all his time getting dunked in water in Mexico, Mr. Redford still sometimes did morning laps in the Rosarito Beach Hotel pool, an astonished Mr. Chandor reported.

Still, Mr. Redford admitted, “they beat the hell out of me.” There were wave, wind and rain machines and a crew member with a giant hose spraying water at his head, leading to an infection that cost him 60 percent of his hearing in his left ear.

Mr. Chandor said the grips were agog. “They were looking at me, like, ‘Am I really going to spray Robert Redford with a big power hose?’ ”

With a tight schedule and a budget of less than $10 million to make the film, Mr. Redford said, “I was so tired of being wet and there was no time not to be wet except at night, and so then it was tequila.”

Mr. Redford has talked about how the constant references to his looks early in his career made him feel as if he were in a cage.

“So I think he found this very liberating,” Mr. Chandor said. “The face at this point is a story in itself. That face is a thing of beauty but in a different way.”

And Mr. Chandor can verify to skeptics Mr. Redford’s claim that his hair remains naturally Hubbell strawberry blond. His locks survived the months of sun and chlorine, with no colorist in sight.

“No one believes me,” Mr. Redford said. “Even my kids didn’t believe me. I keep thinking of Reagan. It’s freaking me out.”

The New York Times critic A. O. Scott described “All Is Lost” as a “ haunting allegory of environmental and economic hubris ,” depicting unfettered global capitalism as the Chinese container gouges the sailboat and a cargo ship and oil freighter pass by, oblivious to Our Man’s plight.

But Mr. Redford, an earnest environmentalist, said he didn’t think about any allegories; his character even throws a piece of plastic into the ocean. Mr. Chandor said he winced when he realized the environmental faux pas, but his star did not object. “I wasn’t thinking of symbolism when I was doing it,” Mr. Redford said. “I was thinking about surviving.” On the plus side, Our Man eats organic soup.

Though Mr. Redford has plenty to occupy him, including turns next year in “Captain America” (chosen because it’s “so different and a little weird”) and filming “A Walk in the Woods,” based on the Bill Bryson book (with Nick Nolte in the role originally envisioned for Newman), he’s still passionately interested in the world. But he says he’s no longer sure how to critique politics, when “the center is not holding, when everything’s spinning and spinning, and when you can’t beat ‘Saturday Night Live.’ ”

When I noted that the glossy Bill McKay from “The Candidate” would now be as weighty as Pat Moynihan, given the childish display in Washington, he agreed. “I’m shocked at how dumbed down the process is,” he said, “Looney Tunes without the Merrie Melodies.”

He seldom watches his movies. He didn’t see “The Sting,” a smash hit in 1973, until 2004 when his grandson suggested it at Christmastime. “I thought it was a really good movie,” Mr. Redford marveled. And he hadn’t seen “All Is Lost” until May when he and Mr. Chandor got to Cannes, where it played out of competition. Mr. Chandor said Mr. Redford never even checked the monitor during filming.

At Cannes, “we walk in and we sit down front and center and that made me nervous,” Mr. Redford recalled. “Where do you escape? How do you get out of here? And then the film plays, and it was hard for me to watch it.”

Mr. Redford, who has never won an Oscar for acting, braced himself for boos and received a nine-minute standing ovation.

“It just threw me completely,” he said. “I felt self-conscious and awkward and shy, and I didn’t know what to do.” He remembers saying to his wife, the German artist Sibylle Szaggars , and his director, “Hey, let’s go.” He said he also told Mr. Chandor, “Enjoy this moment because it will probably never come again,” acknowledging with a laugh that he might have been a damper on the party. “I’m a great partner to have.”

He says he has grown more comfortable in himself as he gets older, and abides by his favorite T. S. Eliot line: “There is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”

“To me, it was always to climb up the hill,” said the man sitting on his own mountain. “Not standing at the top.”

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A shipwrecked yachtsman on All Is Lost

T his film certainly brings back memories. Like its main character, a solo sailor played by Robert Redford , I know what it's like to be alone and in trouble on the open sea. In 1997, my yacht capsized in a storm in the Southern Ocean while I was competing in a solo round-the-world race. I spent four days in the upturned hull until I was rescued by the Australian navy. In a situation like that, a new person emerges from inside you: you either become determined to survive, or you don't.

Redford's character, whose name we are never told, makes a lot of mistakes the average person probably wouldn't notice, but they're obvious to an experienced sailor. You can't climb back into your boat after falling off it in a storm – just try grappling with a yacht in enormous waves. And we don't see him carrying any of the usual safety equipment: he has no handheld GPS, no distress beacon, no VHF radio , not even a pair of binoculars. It's never clear when the film is set, but if it's meant to be modern he would surely have had these devices.

I did enjoy All Is Lost , but I couldn't work out what the storyline was: we never learn why the sailor is making his solo voyage. I suppose some people might wonder, similarly, why anyone would decide to sail alone across vast oceans. We all have our reasons. I do it because I love the challenge of competing in races; others just decide to plod off round the world, taking their time, thoroughly enjoying themselves. That's not my idea of fun. If I'm not racing, I'd rather be sailing with the people I love, drinking wine and frying up some good food.

Despite the grim experience it depicts , I don't think the film will put people off learning to sail. There's a gulf, anyway, between those who sail on holiday and those who train to sail competitively around the world. And we do see Redford's character enjoying himself before his problems start – pottering about, making cups of tea. I was surprised he didn't talk more, though. When you spend so much time alone, you do tend to start talking to yourself.

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All Is Lost

• By Herb McCormick
• Updated: October 23, 2013

All is Lost movie

Lin Pardey was excited. The prolific author and two-time circumnavigator had just received a call from a Hollywood studio. Robert Redford was shooting a film about offshore sailing. And the prop man wished to use a copy of Storm Tactics Handbook , a technical manual she’d written with her husband, Larry, in one of the scenes.

That conversation with Lin happened over a year ago, and I’d forgotten all about it until last spring’s Cannes Film Festival, when Redford’s latest motion picture, All Is Lost , debuted.

The movie is a thriller about a solo sailor who wakes in the middle of the Indian Ocean to discover that his 39-foot cruising boat is sinking after a collision with a shipping container, and it garnered sensational reviews.

Blogger and movie critic Alex Billington, for one, was blown away.

“This film is a work of art,” he writes. “Stunning in so many ways, and it couldn’t be simpler, but that’s why it’s so extraordinary. All Is Lost , the second feature from Oscar-nominated writer/director J.C. Chandor (Margin Call) stars Redford and only Redford as the sole captain of a sailboat … damaged [at sea]. There isn’t any dialogue, only a few lines from Redford, and nothing [for 106 minutes] but him trying to survive on a boat. It’s grueling, thrilling, meticulous, inspiring and most importantly, moving. I can’t stop thinking about it and how wonderful it is.”

“Redford … plays this role with utter naturalism and lack of histrionics or self-regard,” added Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter .

Wow. At press time, All Is Lost was released in U.S. cinemas this October. After reading the many Cannes notices, I can’t wait. Like Lin Pardey, I have a few questions.

For instance, did Storm Tactics Handbook get the good old “Sundance Kid” out of his latest mess?

All is Lost opened in select theaters on October 18. Here ‘s where you can see it:

CALIFORNIA Los Angeles – AMC Century City Los Angeles – Arclight Hollywood Los Angeles – The Landmark

NEW YORK New York – AMC Lincoln Square New York – Angelika Film Center New York – Cinemas 1, 2, 3

The movie will open nationwide on Oct. 25.

From the production notes :

With their one-man cast in place, the producers sat down with the list of necessities for shooting the film. At the very top: a handful of sailboats, and a place to sink them. As it turned out, shooting the story of one man and his boat actually required three boats—specifically, three 39-foot Cal yachts. While all of them serve as Our Man’s sailboat, the Virginia Jean, each of the three boats was used for a separate purpose: One was for open sea sailing and exterior scenes, another was for the tight interior shots, and the third was for special effects.

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Robert Redford is alone at sea in All is Lost

• Natalie Davies

Oscar-winning actor Robert Redford tackles toughest role yet in disaster at sea film 'All is Lost'

For many sailors – particularly those who have spent a chunk of their time sailing solo – Robert Redford’s latest role in ‘All is Lost’ might bite a little too close to the bone. Breaching your hull, getting thrown overboard, capsizing, dismasting – it’s like   Crash Test Boat the Movie with added realism.

The concept for the film is simple: Redford plays the unnamed central character who wakes to find his 39-foot yacht taking on water after a collision with a shipping container. On further inspection he finds all his navigation equipment and radio equipment has been knocked out and he has to rely on his impressive knowledge, skills and strength to survive in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Director J.C. Chandor knew he wanted to make some form of open-water thriller but it took almost six years for him to finally hit upon the idea.

“It’s a very simple story about a guy late in his life who goes out for a four or five-month sail,” Chandor says. “Fate intervenes, the boat has an accident, and essentially we go on an eight-day journey with him as he fights to survive. It’s an existential action movie about one man lost at sea, fighting against the elements and himself.”

Production designer John Goldsmith, whose previous credits include No Country for Old Men and The Last Samurai, said finding three identical Cal yachts proved to be somewhat difficult.

“We scouted them at different times and purchased them in different ports. They all had to be imported, which was a logistical exercise in itself. I think we were two weeks into prep before all three were side by side, ready for us to work on.”

Once they had them, the filmmakers put the boats through their paces-and then some.

“We did pretty much everything that you can do to a boat on film,” Chandor says. “We sunk it, brought it back to life, sailed it, then put it through a massive storm, flipped it over, and sunk it again. I think it’s paramount to have a pretty deep understanding of the way these boats work, the way they sail and sink, as well as all of the different kinds of sailing elements we use to help move the story along.”

In one memorable scene, Robert Redford is chest-deep in water collecting supplies from his slowly sinking yacht. Then he takes a break to stand before the mirror and for possibly the last time in his life, shave.

“You work against the odds in the weirdest ways,” Redford says. “But when the odds are so great against you, you fight hard to create some normalcy in your life, even though it may seem weird.”

Other scenes were intensely physical for the actor, who is known for doing many of his own stunts: from clambering up the sailboat’s 65-foot mast to being dragged behind the boat to swimming underwater through the submerged sails. And then there’s the opening sequence in which the sailboat collides with the shipping container and our man jumps from one to the other.

“We slammed a boat into the side of a shipping container with him on it, that’s in the movie,” Dodson says. “There’s this huge jolt, and that’s Bob actually hitting the side of a boat and being okay with it. We put him in a life raft and flipped him upside down and inside out, and he was game.”

“Whenever he did his own stunts, it was both inspiring and exciting, and it also put a little fear in us,” Gerb adds. “But he is in great physical shape. He loves the water and he loves to swim. There are a lot of physical challenges in making this film. Even just being wet all day is exhausting and physically draining on any actor. But his spirit and his understanding of the vision for this film just took over. He came to the set every day and absolutely gave himself over to the process of making this film.”

All is Lost is released on 26th December 2013.

Robert Redford sails alone in the stunning ‘All Is Lost’

At war with the elements.

“All Is Lost” is the most bare-bones movie to come along in years. Two hours of Robert Redford on a boat on the Indian Ocean, and the boat’s sinking — that’s it, no other characters, no other story lines, hardly any dialogue. It sounds like a recipe for inspirational bromides on one hand or sheer boredom on the other. Instead the movie’s a nearly perfect thing: Economic, elegant, and elemental, it’s a cleanly observed tale of one man coping with incremental disaster and trying, decision by decision, action by action, to keep the odds going in his favor. You can supply your own allegory here if you want, but it’s not necessary. “All Is Lost” works quite brilliantly on its most basic narrative level.

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It screens Thursday night at the Coolidge and opens elsewhere Friday.

The movie starts the way trouble tends to, before you realize what’s hit you — or, as in this case, what you’ve hit. A well-to-do man (Redford) wakes up in the bunk of his pleasure craft to find water lapping against his chin. While sailing solo across the ocean, he has collided with a cargo container floating on its own in the middle of nowhere. Sneakers pour out from a hole in its side. The oceans pour in from a hole in his hull.

The hole is just above the shelves holding the ship’s radio and his laptop, so communication with the wider world is moot. Oh, and the engine is swamped. The man’s an experienced sailor and slow to panic, though, and the initial scenes of “All Is Lost” derive their curiosity and interest from watching resourcefulness at work. Here’s how you mix up a batch of fiberglass, rig up a bosun’s chair, and hang over the side to make repairs. Here’s how you fashion the handle for a manual bilge pump. Here’s how you keep a weather eye out for storms, because of course there will be a storm.

There is, and it’s a horror show experienced primarily from the man’s point of view, with few poetic “God” shots emphasizing the smallness of the boat in an endless sea. Besides, there’s too much to do. The drama in these scenes is immediate and frightening, and if you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to be in a yacht rolling over through 360 degrees of heavy weather or to be dragged underwater in your own wake, “All Is Lost” will make you grateful you’re on dry land.

There are further mishaps, large and small, and the man’s options narrow in steady progression. Still, he sticks to the jobs at hand. Someone on land — a wife? a business partner? — has gifted him with a high-end sextant, and he busies himself with a book on celestial navigation. There may be shipping lanes within reach. All the man has to do is be seen.

If there’s an underlying message to “All Is Lost” — and I’m not saying there is — it’s that we are not seen, by and large. That our journeys are our own and that we’d better be good at bailing, navigating, maybe a little electrical work. And that while we spend our journeys convinced we’re invincible — working like hell at it, actually — there comes a moment when we have to face the fact that the jig is almost certainly up. What we do then is our own business and in accordance with our own nature. The movie is a Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook that ever so subtly backs into Zen.

“All Is Lost” represents two distinct triumphs. For director J.C. Chandor, whose 2009 debut, “Margin Call,” was a Wall Street movie with unexpected smarts, the new film confirms a major talent, all the more so for announcing itself in a minor key. He could have gone so many ways here, painting the beauty of sea and sky with digital lyricism, a la “Life of Pi,” filling us in on the hero’s back story, in the style of “Gravity,” or stirring us with themes of man’s life-force and need for company, on the order of “Cast Away.” There’s no Wilson here, though, and little romanticism of any sort. Peter Zuccarini's cinematography is functional first and nice to look at second, and Alex Ebert’s score — a stunning accomplishment only in retrospect — at times could be mistaken for wind sighing in the rigging.

For those of us who’ve been around long enough, “All Is Lost” is also a reminder of what Robert Redford can bring to a movie when he’s not worrying about the fate of the world. The star is nearing 80 now, and the Olympian handsomeness he used to wear as both blessing and burden has become craggy: He’s a gorgeous wreck and still not much given to onscreen self-examination. His character here isn’t introspective either. Whoever he is — the credits call him “Our Man,” but only because “The Man” would sound too tritely symbolic — he’s rich enough to own a yacht and take time off to cross an ocean. In the film’s opening voice-over, he composes a farewell note, just in case, and apologizes to the people he has screwed over. A master of the universe, then, except the universe is 39 feet long and shrinking fast.

One requirement I ask of the reader: If you see “All Is Lost,” please do so in a movie theater. Chandor has made a film that rewards the big-screen viewer with a sense of immersion, contemplation, and granular detail, all of which would go over the rails in the distractions of the home-viewing environment. Simply put, if Our Man doesn’t have an iPhone at hand, neither should you. More to the point, we should feel powerfully alone together with him, from the start of this amazing journey all the way to its haunting, beautifully ambiguous end.

Ty Burr can be reached at [email protected] . Follow him on Twitter @tyburr .

Published on October 10th, 2013 | by Editor

All is Lost: Behind the scenes making of the film

Published on October 10th, 2013 by Editor -->

The latest sailing theme movie hoping to make a big splash – All is Lost – will be released in New York and Los Angeles on October 18, and then in over 200 cities throughout the United States in the following week. Here are the movie’s production notes which provide some of the nuggets about the behind the scenes making of the film…

ALL IS LOST – SYNOPSIS Academy Award® winner Robert Redford stars in All Is Lost, an open-water thriller about one man’s battle for survival against the elements after his sailboat is destroyed at sea. Written and directed by Academy Award nominee J.C. Chandor (Margin Call) with a musical score by Alex Ebert (Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros), the film is a gripping, visceral and powerfully moving tribute to ingenuity and resilience.

Deep into a solo voyage in the Indian Ocean, an unnamed man (Redford) wakes to find his 39-foot yacht taking on water after a collision with a shipping container left floating on the high seas. With his navigation equipment and radio disabled, the man sails unknowingly into the path of a violent storm. Despite his success in patching the breached hull, his mariner’s intuition, and a strength that belies his age, the man barely survives the tempest.

Using only a sextant and nautical maps to chart his progress, he is forced to rely on ocean currents to carry him into a shipping lane in hopes of hailing a passing vessel. But with the sun unrelenting, sharks circling and his meager supplies dwindling, the ever-resourceful sailor soon finds himself staring his mortality in the face.

Lionsgate & Roadside Attractions, Black Bear Pictures and Treehouse Pictures present a Before The Door/Washington Square Films Production. Robert Redford in All Is Lost. The director of photography is Frank G. DeMarco and the underwater director of photography is Peter Zuccarini. Production designer is John P. Goldsmith. Editor is Pete Beaudreau. The music is composed by Alex Ebert. Visual effects supervisor is Robert Munroe. Executive producers are Cassian Elwes, Laura Rister, Glen Basner, Joshua Blum, Howard Cohen, Eric D’Arbeloff, Rob Barnum, Kevin Turen, Corey Moosa and Zachary Quinto. The producers are Justin Nappi and Teddy Schwarzman. Produced by Neal Dodson p.g.a. and Anna Gerb p.g.a. Written and directed by J.C. Chandor.

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION Filmmaker J.C. Chandor knew he wanted to make some form of open-water thriller long before his feature writing and directing debut, Margin Call, was nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar®. But it took almost six years for him to finally hit upon the startlingly original idea for All Is Lost, a harrowing nautical adventure that takes place entirely at sea and features a single nameless—and nearly wordless— character.

“It’s a very simple story about a guy late in his life who goes out for a four- or five-month sail,” Chandor says. “Fate intervenes, the boat has an accident, and essentially we go on an eight-day journey with him as he fights to survive.”

Chandor’s screenplay bore little resemblance to a typical movie script. Rather than the standard 120 pages, it was roughly 30 pages long. And it consisted entirely of prose description, with no dialogue. In fact, when Margin Call producer Neal Dodson got his hands on the slim sheaf of papers, he asked Chandor when he would receive the rest of it.

“When J.C. said that it was the whole script, I was both terrified and excited,” Dodson recalls. “The first film we did together was all about dialogue, and this was very obviously not about dialogue. I admit that my first thought was, ‘I don’t know how the hell we’re going to get this thing financed’—because it’s pretty audacious and pretty brave.”

Fellow producer Anna Gerb (Margin Call) recalls reading the script on her deck with Chandor present, and being blown away by the sheer viscerality of it.

“I read it and I looked at J.C. and said, ‘Wow. I’m seasick,'” she recalls. “As a producer, I like to be in control. Being in the middle of the ocean on a sailboat, putting myself in a situation where I am at the mercy of the universe is something I just couldn’t imagine. ”

Chandor, on the other hand, was intimately familiar with the universe of sailboats.

“Although I never sailed across the ocean alone, sailing is something I grew up around,” he says, “so I knew the basic palette I was working with.”

Chandor says the sheer simplicity of the story—and the filmmaking challenge it presented—drew him to make the film. The story has echoes of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, and as Dodson describes “it’s an existential action movie about one man lost at sea, fighting against the elements and himself.”

A pivotal step in the film’s journey from script to screen was, of course, the casting of two-time Academy Award winner Robert Redford (The Sting). The iconic actor, director and creator of Sundance had met and been impressed with Chandor when Margin Call premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2011.

“I liked J.C. Chandor,” Redford recalls. “He represented, for me, the exact type of person that we want to support. He had a vision, he was a new voice on the horizon and he told his story in a very special way.”

When Chandor told Dodson that he wanted to cast Redford as the film’s sole character, referred to simply as “Our Man” in the script, the producer knew it was a longshot.

“I said, ‘Listen, he’s going to say one of two things when he gets that 30-page script,” Dodson recalls. “He’s either going to say, ‘Hell yes, this sounds amazing,’ or he’s going to say, ‘Why in the world would I do that? I have nothing to prove. Why would I put myself through that?’ And to our great, great benefit, he said yes.”

For his part, Redford was drawn to the originality of the project, which he describes as a story about a man who takes “one heck of a journey and one heck of a beating.”

“I really liked the script because it was different,” Redford says. “It was bold. It was eccentric, and there was no dialogue. I felt that J.C. was going to go through with that vision, even though it was not all explained.

But I trusted that he knew what he was doing, that he had it in his head. I knew I would be supporting that vision even while not knowing everything, and that was interesting and good for me.”

Perhaps surprisingly, Redford says he doesn’t get bombarded with invitations to star in the movies of the independent filmmakers he champions. Quite the contrary, in fact.

“There’s something kind of ironic in that, all these years after starting Sundance and starting the film festival, none of the filmmakers that I supported ever hired me,” he says, then adds jokingly: “They never offered me a part! Until J.C.”

With their one-man cast in place, the producers sat down with the list of necessities for shooting the film. At the very top: a handful of sailboats, and a place to sink them. As it turned out, shooting the story of one man and his boat actually required three boats—specifically, three 39-foot Cal yachts. While all of them serve as Our Man’s sailboat, the Virginia Jean, each of the three boats was used for a separate purpose: One was for open sea sailing and exterior scenes, another was for the tight interior shots, and the third was for special effects.

Finding three similar boats proved to be a challenge, however, says production designer John Goldsmith, whose previous credits include No Country for Old Men and The Last Samurai. “We scouted them at different times and purchased them in different ports. They all had to be imported, which was a logistical exercise in itself. I think we were two weeks into prep before all three were side by side, ready for us to work on.”

Once they had them, the filmmakers put the boats through their paces—and then some. “We did pretty much everything that you can do to a boat on film,” Chandor says. “We sunk it, brought it back to life, sailed it, then put it through a massive storm, flipped it over, and sunk it again. I think it’s paramount to have a pretty deep understanding of the way these boats work, the way they sail and sink, as well as all of the different kinds of sailing elements we use to help move the story along.”

Chandor and Goldsmith collaborated closely in crafting a kind of back story for the boat itself, which in turn helped inform the story of Redford’s character.

“J.C. and I had some fantastic conversations about what story we wanted to tell about Our Man that would be expressed through this boat,” Goldsmith recalls. “What kind of past has he had? Was he a military man? Is he a businessman? Is he a family man?”

Goldsmith says Chandor gave him detailed notes to guide the production design. For instance, the director told him he envisioned Redford’s character bought the boat at age 51, six years after the boat was built. Ten years after that, the boat’s upkeep may have slipped a little due to the economic slump in the 1990s. Painting the back story in even greater detail, Chandor envisioned that Redford’s character retired seven years after that, then invested about $20,000 in updating the boat.

“So maybe he selected certain things like the cushions, which were tired, and reupholstered those,” Goldsmith explains. “Maybe he upgraded the window treatments, maybe a few pieces of electronics. So there’s this idea of layering of time and history in this boat. But it’s not an overhaul. It’s not a renovation. In that way, the design had to be really careful about not coming too far forward, but being sort of quiet.”

Given the solitary nature of the film, Chandor, at times, lets his camera linger on Redford and relish his quiet, simple activities in a way seldom seen on film.

“It’s rare to watch someone think,” Dodson observes. “Most movies are very ‘cutty,’ and I enjoy those movies. But this isn’t that movie. Yes, it’s got action sequences, but the camera is going to sit on him for a while. We’re going to watch him eat a can of soup, and watch him have a glass of bourbon, and watch him cook, and watch him stand in the rain.”

In one memorable scene, the sailor is chest-deep in water collecting supplies from his slowly sinking yacht. Then he takes a break to stand before the mirror and—for possibly the last time in his life—shave.

“You work against the odds in the weirdest ways,” Redford says. “But when the odds are so great against you, you fight hard to create some normalcy in your life, even though it may seem weird.”

Other scenes were intensely physical for the actor, who is known for doing many of his own stunts: from clambering up the sailboat’s 65-foot mast to being dragged behind the boat to swimming underwater through the submerged sails. And then there’s the opening sequence in which the sailboat collides with the shipping container and Our Man jumps from one to the other.

“We slammed a boat into the side of a shipping container with him on it—that’s in the movie,” Dodson says. “There’s this huge jolt, and that’s Bob actually hitting the side of a boat and being okay with it. We put him in a life raft and flipped him upside down and inside out, and he was game.”

“Whenever he did his own stunts, it was both inspiring and exciting, and it also put a little fear in us,” Gerb adds. “But he is in great physical shape. He loves the water and he loves to swim. There are a lot of physical challenges in making this film. Even just being wet all day is exhausting and physically draining on any actor. But his spirit and his understanding of the vision for this film just took over. He came to the set every day and absolutely gave himself over to the process of making this film.”

For his part, Redford says he greatly enjoyed working with the director, whom he credits with getting the best out of him as an actor.

“I’m doing this because of J.C.,” Redford says. “I like him. He has a joyous spirit and a wonderful disposition. But the thing that’s incredible is how busy his mind is. It’s a quicksilver mind, and I find it really fascinating. I think he will do very well, because he knows what he wants and he knows how he wants to get it, but he stays loose through the process, which I think is wonderful. He’s very intuitive, he has a vision, and I trust him and his ability to deliver that vision.”

Chandor’s use of digital effects was largely restricted to enhancing backgrounds and skies, as well as enhancing the waves that surrounded the boat and hammered Redford’s character. All visual effects work was handled by a team at Toronto-based SPIN VFX, overseen by Chandor and longtime VFX supervisor Robert Munroe (X-Men).

Filming in water is notoriously challenging, and that was certainly the case with All Is Lost, which does not feature a single shot set on dry land. Camera crews filmed in various parts of the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean, including off the coast of Ensenada, Mexico, about 80 miles south of San Diego. At one point, Redford sailed the Virginia Jean into port there, complete with a patched-up hole in the side of the boat.

“It was amazing to see the reactions of real sailors in the marina,” says Gerb. “They were looking at our boat, which had clearly been through an incredible battle. It had a film crew hanging off of it and Robert Redford at the helm.”

The shots of sea life—including shoals of small fish, yellowtail, barracuda and the beautiful if terrifying shots of dozens of swirling sharks—in the Bahamas, off the coast of Nassau and Lyford Cay, where an entire camera crew dove down more than 60 feet to capture the footage of the fish.

For the sequences involving the massive shipping vessels, the crew filmed in the ocean around Los Angeles—out of the port of Long Beach to the south, and further north near Catalina Island.

But the open ocean is no place to safely sink a yacht. For those scenes and a number of others, including the opening collision with the shipping container, the filmmakers turned to the world’s largest filming tanks. Baja Studios, located in Rosarito Beach on Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, the facility was effectively built from the ground up by James Cameron, who required a customized water environment to shoot the spectacular nautical effects for Titanic. In fact, some of the crew on All Is Lost had also worked on Titanic, including line producer Luisa Gomez da Silva, who works full time at the facility and counts herself part of “the Titanic generation.”

The filmmakers used three giant water tanks for different aspects of the shoot, including the world’s largest exterior tank, which sits right on the ocean and has an infinity-edge horizon line.

“It’s the size of three football fields and it creates a very real ocean look,” Gerb says. “These tanks mimic being out at sea, but in a controlled environment where we could safely pull off a lot of our stunts and special effects. It was really the only place in the world we could have made this film.”

Initially, Chandor and Goldsmith believed they would have all they needed with the three boats, but one particularly dramatic sequence, in which the storm-tossed Virginia Jean repeatedly capsizes and rights itself, called for extraordinary creativity. Although the filmmakers had thought they could use the special-effects boat for this underwater rolling stunt, after further exploration they realized they needed to better protect Redford. As a result, multiple departments pulled together to build a special rig for the purpose.

Similarly, special effects supervisor Brendon O’Dell (Training Day) had to come up with creative solutions to simulate the violent movement of the boat in the storm. “Typically, on a big-budget movie, you’d build a really elaborate gimbal that could move the boat in any direction,” he says. “But that would have been very expensive and time consuming, so we had to rethink our approach.”

Instead, O’Dell’s team used simple rigging and hydraulic cylinders, together with the natural buoyancy of the boat working against the water. “We would just suck the front of the boat down with a cylinder and let the back up, and vice-versa,” he says. “It also worked side to side. It looked really good.”

The complex shoot required seven weeks of meticulous preparation—unusual for a small, independent film. “We needed to create a schedule that tracked wet scenes, dry scenes, storm scenes, with three boats, three tanks and an additional sound stage, night and day, stunts, VFX shots and non-VFX shots,” Dodson says. “It was a lot more complicated than anything I’ve ever worked on before, and enormously complex for a 30-day shoot on our budget.”

The producer says the crew worked less from the script than from a big map in their main conference room on which the entire movie was storyboarded.

“We didn’t really even have sides,” he says, referring to the daily printouts actors usually use. “We used a printout of that day’s storyboards—we’d just go through them and shoot them.”

To capture All is Lost Chandor turned to not one, but two directors of photography—Frank G. DeMarco and underwater cinematographer Peter Zuccarini. For DeMarco, the challenge of shooting a movie without dialogue was not without silver linings.

“One interesting thing is that you can do far more takes on a movie with less dialogue,” says DeMarco, who also worked with the director on Margin Call. “The other interesting thing is that, like in a silent movie, the director can sometimes direct the actor during the take. J.C. could actually say, ‘Bob, now remember this, and then do that, and pick up that, and look up there,’ while the camera was rolling.”

DeMarco says shooting interior shots in the tight space of a yacht’s cabin was also tricky—for example, when Redford had to squeeze past the camera on DeMarco’s shoulder or during very close shots.

“We shot with wide lenses, which helped a lot,” DeMarco recalls. “We used a lot of natural light. Ultimately, we just made it work.” If some crewmembers found themselves having to contend with water, others thrived in it—and none more than Zuccarini, whose credits range from low-budget surfing documentaries to the seafaring blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

“He and his team know how to get in their wetsuits, seal up the cameras, balance their weight and their breathing, and swim in and under the water, shooting footage that you can’t believe,” Dodson says.

With its smorgasbord of water-related challenges, All Is Lost was an irresistible project, says Zuccarini. “I specialize in putting cameras in places that are very wet. So when I saw from the very first moment of the script that there’s water flowing into the boat, he’s immersed in water, water is going to spray on his face, waves are dumping on him—I admit, I was pretty excited.”

Adding to the production challenges, editor Pete Beaudreau (Margin Call) did the first pass of editing on location to ensure that the production got what it needed. After a rough start, he says he got used to the approach.

“Because I was able to get the material so quickly, I could show J.C. at the end of the day whatever he had shot that morning, all put together,” Beaudreau says. “And if he felt like he was missing something, we could go in the next morning and grab it.”

In a film so devoid of dialogue, the musical score assumed special importance. Chandor turned to acclaimed singer-songwriter Alex Ebert, leader of the band Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, to compose the film’s score—his first such project.

“It was sort of a shocker in some ways,” says Ebert. “It’s amazing that J.C. would have that kind of faith in someone who hadn’t scored a film.”

Ebert says Chandor initially asked him to deliver very subdued materials, drones and low notes that sustained over scenes. He also specifically requested that the instrumentation avoid piano. That was challenging for the composer, who had already written some pieces on piano, but he understood Chandor’s reasoning.

“The piano has this inherent emotion to it,” he says. “We didn’t want anything that was ’emotion in a can’ or ‘tension in a can.’ But eventually I started taking more chances, and after some back and forth with J.C., we landed in this middle spot that I think was perfect.”

Ebert says he played various instruments, including synthesizer, crystal bowls and Tibetan bowls. He also played orchestral samples, most of which were later replaced by musicians using real instruments. Other times he came up with themes on the piano, then mocked them up with sampled flutes or other sampled instruments, before bringing in great musicians to play them. Seth Ford-Young, the bass player from the Magnetic Zeros also provided a number of sounds that evoked the calls of whales and other sea mammals.

“The biggest challenge was walking that fine line between truth and melodrama,” Ebert says. “You don’t want to undershoot it and you don’t want to overshoot it. You want to nail the emotion precisely. Anything else is not doing it justice.”

For Ebert, All Is Lost is an inherently emotional film with massive stakes, and he felt he needed to express that in the music.

“It’s about beauty,” he says. “It’s emotional and everything that comes along with life and death, and nothing less. I think that’s the primary subject of humanity—and it’s something that you might want to stay away from because it would be overdramatic. But this dude’s in the middle of the ocean on a raft. Let the music be emotional because it is emotional. We followed the movie’s lead.”

The task of building a robust soundscape for an almost dialogue-less film on the sea fell to the Oscar winning sound team behind such hits as Saving Private Ryan and Jurassic Park, Richard Hymns and Gary Rydstrom, along with their colleagues Steve Boeddeker and Brandon Proctor, from Marin County’s famous SkyWalker Sound. They had already worked on several films with Redford in the director’s chair and welcomed the chance to work with him again.

In some ways, All Is Lost is a tribute to man’s seemingly limitless ingenuity and resilience, with Redford’s character simply refusing to quit.

“This character keeps going to a point when some people would give up and say, ‘It’s too much,'” Redford says. “‘I’m out in the middle of nowhere. No one is here to help me and it seems like I’ve done everything I possibly can. Why not give up?'”

To answer that question, Redford references an earlier film whose sparseness and primal simplicity have something in common with All Is Lost and in which the actor plays another lone man battling nature and self.

“I thought about Jeremiah Johnson, about that film and that character, especially since I had developed that project myself,” says Redford of the 1972 film. “He had a choice to give up or continue but he continues, because that’s all there is. And this film, I think, suggests the same thing. He just goes on because that’s all he can do. Some people wouldn’t, but he does.”

It’s in those moments of maximum anguish that Our Man actually breaks his pervasive silence and utters a word or two—to great effect.

“There’s a scene where we finally hear the iconic Robert Redford voice,” says Gerb. “There is no real dialogue to speak of in the film, but in this one moment, for a very brief second, he says something. And to hear his voice, and how it comes out, is so powerful, because we all know that voice. And then it comes, and it’s this tiny beat, but it’s a very moving moment for me.”

For Dodson, it is precisely the drive to survive—even when all is apparently lost—that gets to the heart of the film’s meaning.

“It’s a movie about why we keep fighting,” Dodson says. “It’s a movie about why we try to live—about why we would fight against death when it seems so obvious that it’s our time to go. Answering that question about human beings is something philosophers, religion and great thinkers have been trying to do as long as humans have been on earth. I think this movie tries to ask that timeless question in a new way. And for my own part, I’m far more interested in going to see movies and making movies that ask questions than in movies that propose to answer them.”

It’s also part of what makes the film unlike any other, the producer says.

“I don’t think you’ve ever seen a movie like this before,” Dodson says. “It’s a truly singular vision. It’s watching one guy—a master of his craft—work through a character in 90 minutes. And it’s an adventure. But the existential questions in it, I think, will resonate for people even more powerfully.”

As for Chandor, he says he hopes audiences will see themselves reflected in Redford’s valiantly struggling survivor.

“What I’m hoping,” Chandor muses, “is that this character becomes a vessel where audience members are able to see themselves, or parts of themselves. That he becomes the embodiment of some of their hopes, concerns, dreams, worries, fears—all those primal human characteristics. It’s not something that I want to lay out too explicitly, but to a certain extent, I hope that he can become a kind of mirror. And if I did my job well, the film, like Our Man’s journey, is going to be exhilarating and terrifying, and, I hope, emotional and haunting.”

Tags: All Is Lost , sailing movie

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A virtual port of call for all those who love the sea , hosted by nautical novelist rick spilman.

All is Lost, Robert Redford as Solo Sailor – a Review

It wasn’t that I was not engaged by the movie, but I kept being pulled out of the story by little things, details that didn’t make sense, as well as at least one obvious large omission. Unlike “Life of Pi,” which was explicitly fantasy, “All is Lost” is a realistic movie of details. When in the early scenes, the sailor uses a sea anchor to pull the container free from the sailboat, I thought, “OK, interesting idea.” When the sailor patches the hole in the boat’s hull with fiberglass cloth and epoxy, I appreciated how difficult it is to make such a large patch on a moving boat and worried if it will be strong enough. The details are what drew me into the story.

Unfortunately, they were what also pulled me out. Being a sailor is not necessarily a good thing when watching a movie about sailing.

I found myself, for example, annoyed and distracted by the companionway hatch boards. The boat used in the movie was a Cal 39, which does not have a bridge deck in the cockpit. What that means is that rather than having a raised section of deck, level with the top of the cockpit seats; the companionway, the hatch providing access to down below, is open to the level of the cockpit deck. This means that when the hatch boards are out, water in the cockpit can drain directly into the cabin. In “All is Lost” whenever the sailor came below deck, he put the hatch boards in and enclosed the sliding hatch, but when he went on deck he would drop the hatch boards below deck and appear to leave the companionway wide open. I thought “OK this is just editing,” but later, in a scene where the boat is knocked down and dismasted, when the boat pops up again, there is the companionway, wide open.  Miraculously the boat did not fill full of water through the wide open hatch.

OK, big deal. A continuity error. The problem is that there are many other spots where instead of being engrossed in the film, I was stopping to say “what?” The storm jib looked really big and why didn’t he raise the mainsail? A deeply reefed main would seem to make much more sense than an oversized storm jib and a furled mainsail. The trip up the mast in the bosun’s chair was a great scene, but seemed to have nothing really to do with the problems the sailor was having with his radio at the time. What about self-steering or an autopilot? There seemed to be neither, though the sailor spent a lot of time below decks. What wait to the last minute to fill a jug of fresh water? What wasn’t it filled already? And on and on.

The one really big omission in the movie, is, of course, an EPIRB, an Emergency Position Indicating Beacon. An EPIRB could have sent out a distress signal to alert passing ships of the sinking.  Why would an otherwise well equipped sailboat crossing the Indian Ocean not have an EPIRB aboard? The obvious reason is that it would mess up the plot of the movie. The screenwriter could have bothered to have had the EPIRB crushed in the collision with the container, an unlikely event, but one that would at least solve the problem.  A waterproof handheld VHS radio would have also made the sailor’s life much easier, (I have one for my kayak) but I can overlook that. An EPIRB onthe other hand seems too obvious simply to leave out or ignore.

By the time the sailboat sinks (not a spoiler, you see it happen in the trailer) I found myself wondering even about the major plot points. Just as the scene going up the mast in the bosun’s chair didn’t really relate to anything, so too the opening scene itself was a  red herring. The collision with the container is not what sinks the boat. It doesn’t really even contribute to sinking the boat. The terrible looking patch apparently survives the storm, as if evident by how long the boat stays afloat. The boat sinks because of damage from the dismasting, not from bumping into the container.

Finally, I realized after I had left the theater and was walking down the street, that while Redford’s gave a fantastic performance, that I still knew nothing about the character and didn’t care all that much either. We knew that he was American, male, affluent enough to own and sail an oceangoing sailboat, and that he had loved ones ashore. Was there a character arc to the movie? Not so much. It was a fine adventure film but not much more. Various comparisons currently being made to Hemingway, Conrad and Melville by other reviewers strike me as a wild excess of enthusiasm, at best.

Would I recommend “All is Lost” to sailors and those otherwise interested in sailing? Yes, I would. I can predict that it will be the best major motion picture about single handing that you will probably see all year — as well as the worst and only. The cinematography is great. Redford’s performance is wonderful. Unfortunately, “All is Lost” could have easily been a much better movie that it is.

All is Lost, Robert Redford as Solo Sailor – a Review — 117 Comments

Thanks for the review. Many movies nowadays have plot holes and impossible feats performed off-camera (leaving me disappointed, because I’d like to know how the character performed the feat. And so often this happens with action/adventure films, where that would be a key element in the movie.) Sounds like this movie has similar problems.

I haven’t seen the film yet. But I won’t blame you for being fastidious on the technical aspects of it. There is such a thing as ‘verisimulitude’, and the sailing-related details you cited all have a bearing on how realistic – and thus believable – the film is. Of course, the average movie-goers will think of you as a big snob. All they want is entertainment. They’ll come out of the theatres happy, albeit as ignorant about sailboats and sailing as when they entered.

Sorry, I meant to say ‘verisimilitude’.

Great review and I agree with you on all points. My wife and I saw the film last night in NY and the first thing we said to each other when it ended was, “Where’s the EPIRB?!” Mr. Chandor was there in person to discuss the picture after the showing and he mentioned that he’s a sailor, though he would “never cross an ocean by himself.” I debated bringing up some obvious cruiser questions, but thought better of it, looking around and realizing the audience wouldn’t have understood or cared.

For giggles, here are some other things that bugged us:

Where was the ditch bag? He’s making an ocean passage — alone — and he doesn’t have an abandon ship bag set up containing essential stuff like a hand-held radio, GPS, personal locator beacon, hand-held compass, and perhaps a manual water maker? It could also contain a flashlight and batteries, which could’ve obviated some nasty pyrotechnics that occur near the end of the film.

Another glaring omission was the lack of a dodger or a bimini. Having cruised ourselves for a few years, including an Atlantic crossing and back, I can attest that the sun will cook you to a crisp without some cover and unless you like big greenies rolling into the cockpit and your face, it would be advisable to install a dodger.

Lastly, the scene of him cooking after the batteries are dead puzzled us. I have to admit my only experience is with using propane, but to get the gas to flow you need to send current to the solenoid. Perhaps it was an alcohol stove?

Despite all that, it’s a good film, gripping and scary and well done. I recommend seeing it.

One more thing:

I think he had a Nautical Almanac to use with that sextant, but where are the reduction tables you need to make an accurate fix?

I’m planning to see this film, but I really appreciate your reveiw. Having done some blue water sailing on a 36′ sailboat, I related to everything you had a problem with. It’s a pity that an obviously good story wasn’t made better by just getting a few more details right.

Rick, I’m going to change the oil on the car, instead of going to the movies. However, i’ll catch this one on the Library’s DVD’s soon enough! Thanks for the heads up Thx wss

Dig into marine accident investigations and it’s easy to see that many and possibly most of the quibbles mentioned here are paralleled in real life. Missing/nonfunctional beacon, no ditch bag; the litany of failure is pretty much comprehensive.

Perhaps it’s unlikely to find so many errors concentrated in a single vessel, though. 🙂

Lack of self-steering or autopilot and no dodger do seem pretty unlikely. That and calling “SOS,” though maybe SOS is simply consistent with a character also having no ditch bag or EPIRB?

Thanks to everyone for their comments. Very interesting and well informed. It is funny. This movie may be like “Gravity” which got rave reviews but was panned by Neil deGrasse Tyson and others for screwing up the science. (No, I am not comparing myself to Tyson.)

It would not have been difficult to make the movie better. The only problem I see is that sailors who watch the movie are likely to be distracted by the non-sequiturs rather than enjoying the acting and the cinematography which are very good. Linda, they should have hired you to consult.

Doug, I agree, there have been many cases where even stranger mistakes and omissions have taken place. But to paraphrase Tom Clancy, “the difference between fiction and reality, is that fiction has to make sense.”

Howard, I missed the detail about the stove solenoid. I sailed for years with an alcohol stove and oven but I suspect the boat in the movie was new enough to have a propane stove. You are also exactly right about the lack of a dodger or bimini.

Definitely a movie worth seeing but requiring a bit of patience if you have spent much time offshore,

[MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS] I just saw the movie, so here are my two cents. An outstanding performance, beautifully underplayed. A gripping movie, we were securely fastened to the front edge of our seats. Great, this movie works for me, mostly. But, being a sailor myself, I am quite disappointed in several things.

There are some inconsistencies, but mostly the lack of our man’s seamanship is simply astounding. Given that he seems to be well heeled, and being an experienced and seasoned singlehanded sailor, he makes quite a fool of himself. I agree with most above mentioned points (no abandon ship bag, empty fresh water tank, the goof with the companionway hatches, no sails used during storm etc).

What really upset me though are some more things: – He never ever wears a PFD, let alone a survival suit later on. Makes total sense, especially later when he jumps (!) into the life raft. Great idea for singlehanders to fool around this way. Only reason to understand this: If you go overboard, let it be over quickly – I know that a lot of fisherman deliberately never learn to swim for this very reason. But for that our man goes overboard way too often – and then even without drowning! – Great idiocy too to hold your boat with one line while jumping on a container – no secured line, no PFD – just cool, right? Then instead of securing the line, he holds it with one hand while untying the sea anchor from the container (the very sea anchor which was minutes ago strong enough to pull the whole container away from the boat). Then our man walks both lines back to the boat as if they were chihuahuas. Argh! Honestly, he nearly deserves to fall between boat and container and container and lose both lines due to ropeburn… – He has no lever for the manual bilge pump at hand? He has to carve a piece of wood (probably his flagpole) to be able to pump his vessel empty? Puhleeease. – I understand why he shaves before the storm. A last trial to exert some control and composure before the shit hits the fan. Yes, he seems to be relatively reasonable and considers his options throughout pretty well, but how stupid is it to start switching sails when the storm is blowing already. I’d rather had these shaving minutes for changing the sails. The main sail – even when not up – seems to be reefed on the first reef point (we see a line through the reef point on the luff while being loosely tied to the boom, and at some time we see the main up, but not all not all the way), but we don’t see it really being used, and it is never ever properly tightened to the boom. Recipe for disaster which costs him rightfully the mast later on. – Instead of using a maximally reefed mainsail and a storm jib (or at least the frigging engine) to keep control of his vessel, he just gets sloshed around. No wonder that he gets the big whammies fully on the beam / sideways. Not much mercy here from me, but what wonder that he and the boat survive this. – He wears only a harness with one tether line, not with two. On top of that he has no deck webbing secured to deck plates or such nor clicking points close to the center line of the boat (like on the boom, the mast, central deck plates and such. Instead he clicks himself into the lifelines! That’s a recipe for disaster. First stanchions love to break under too much duress. Secondly, when you go overboard, you almost certainly hang under the water surface and have hardly a chance to get back aboard. Stoooopid. He could be happy if the stanchions would break and release him so far that he could make it to the ladder on the stern. But that ladder is problably anyway tied up in a way that he can’t release it from the water. Another reason to NOT make it. How did he come back anyway in the first storm? He climbed up his sails?

In some details I beg to differ from the earlier observations by you and other commenters: – A handheld radio wouldn’t have done much good here – they don’t reach much further than some miles, even in boost mode. If I remember right, he is 1700 miles offshore. A hendheld would help only if a ship comes right by, Well it might have saved him some flares. BTW: Good try to clean his radio with fresh water, but why does he try to fix the antenna connection on the mast top AFTER his radio is toast? – The boat definitely had a self steering mechanism. You see the wind vane behind the stern pulpit, and you also see the line around the steering wheel axle. The vane breaks off after the first storm and you see the remnants sticking up from the stern rail. We sailed recently with a very similar system (parallel to a hooked up GPS with Autohelm) on a Crealock 34 from Maine to North Carolina, and I was astonished to experience that, steering with the wind vane alone, we came in six hours barely 200 ft off course. I guess we had a really steady reach. Anyway, a truly beautiful system which uses wind and heel alike to steer. – I thought I had seen an EPIRB mounted to the stern pulpit before the first storm. Might have been just a man-over.board marker, but I thought I had seen an EPIRB. They tend to work, but I heard about failures, too. – I am pretty sure I had seen a dodger – at least in the first sequences of the movie, but it was definitely down, and gone after the first storm, including the metal parts.

I thought the movie poked some fun, too: The useless boat hook from Worst Marine, the sextant being unwrapped only in the life raft and such were really nice details and contributed to the characterization of our man. So even for sailors there were some nice hints in the movie. This lets me think that the shortcomings in our man’s seamanship were deliberately written into the script – otherwise we would have too much of a superman. Obviously his radio skills are not exactly textbook, that all contributes to see a character who sometimes seems to pretend more confident and knowledgeable than he really is. If real character development happens in this movie, it is probably his ruefulness that he never learned and practiced his stuff in time and went so poorly prepared out to sea. I loved his despair driven, unconventional approach at the end of the movie very much though.

Re mass audience: Some situations got solved far too quickly in the movie: Bringing down a furled headsail and pulling up a storm jib is a real doozy in a storm, especially when you are alone. Jumping without live vest in a storm out of a life raft to right it? Sure, a five minute job… 😉 Anyway, the movie showed sufficiently the exhaustion our man has to go through. Just his overboard experiences (twice from the boat, once from the life raft) are quite implausible. I nearly started laughing when he swam back underwater to his capsized boat and just held on in the cockpit until he was back in business.

At least he wore a knife at all times, tied to his pants. Good sailor! Still an interesting movie to see. But as movie with this realistic, not to say naturalistic approach it has certainly some flaws for sailors.

I’m still looking forward to see the film, despite all the faults discussed here.

Maybe it’s best to think of All Is Lost as being something like Gravity . I’m a bit of a space-nut and after reading some early commentary I went in expecting to see quite a bit that I liked while consciously forcing myself to ignore or at least tolerate the warts. Gravity was spectacular, wonderful, “Jack London in space” as somebody put it, but probably more rife with technical gotchas than All Is Lost simply because the topic domain was even more tricky.

Another interesting point of comparison between the film: some critics were fairly harsh about Gravity’s dialog, particularly in the later scenes of the film. They were absolutely right; people talking to themselves sound either crazy or dreadfully stilted, the latter in the case of Gravity . Sounds as the choice of monastic silence was exactly right for All Is Lost .

After reading this post and set of comments I’ll just have to dog down my disbelief even harder before seeing Redford flailing. 🙂

As the 12th. man comment may one compliment Rick on his film review. One was impressed by the comments and how observant you all were, perhaps alerted by Rick’s review. As a former Safety Officer and Nautical Science Instructor one hopes all your observations, corrected, are being practiced when out on the waters. Perhaps the film may serve as an illustration of how some people who go to sea feel they are above the common herd and do not need to follow safety procedures. Here the selection of Mr. Redford was a good choice as he always seems to be above common things and superior to an average person. No doubt one is being unkind here. Never cared for him as an actor or person so it is a biased judgment. Shall of course not be seeing this film. Good Watch.

NYCSwashbuckler,

I was so distracted by everything else I didn’t even notice his lack of a PDF. The boat also did not appear to have any jackstays so when he was crawling forward to set the overly large “storm jib” he was completely untethered.

The wind vane is, I believe, a continuity error. The pedestal for the vane on the stern is evident when the boat is sinking but doesn’t appear in some of the earlier shots. When he goes up the mast, we get a decent look at the stern and I don’t see any sign of the off-center pedestal or of a vane. There were lines leading down from the wheel but they look to be merely wrapped around the shaft, without a drum. Maybe I missed it, but I don’t believe we ever see a vane in the movie and that the boat appears to grow a vane pedestal after the knockdown.

A functioning handheld VHS could have been a lot more useful than flares when the two ships passed close to his liferaft. I am reasonably sure that what looked like a EPIRB on the stern by the horseshoe was a water light, which seem to have disappeared in any case by the time the boat sank. I was also amused by the sextant. He would glance at his watch and take one sight then reduce it without sight reduction tables. I wish I could do that.

Overall, it was still an engaging movie and worth the price of the ticket.

Rick’s point about the handheld VHF is exactly correct, especially when the vessel is so close in passing that you can read her name and hail her directly. Ditto on the magical way Our Man was able to reduce his sights, something I commented on previously.

I too saw a wind vane in some scenes, or thought I did. Our previous boat had a Monitor servo pendulum unit that saved our bacon and steered us all the way to the Azores when our autopilot ram seized up the first night out of Bermuda. They used three Cal 39s making the film including one which they sank and one of them might have had a wind vane.

In the discussion after the film the director, J.C. Chandor, said that Our Man “makes mistakes.” He said, “he should have turned on the engine immediately to run the sump pump to get the water out of the boat.” He’s right about getting the engine going while the batteries are still functioning.

Dead on, CAPT. D. Peter Boucher, Kt. SMOM, MM (Ret.), I think that is the story the film can tell us. And also for this reason an excellent casting. Rick Spilman, I totally agree with you on the use handheld vs the flares. Maybe our man takes his smartphone next time, haha, there’s an sextant app with the reduction tables built in. Just kidding. There are too many flaws in the movie to be enjoyed by sailors, but it’s still a great performance. Thanks, Howard Berger, for this additional info, that could explain it. Maybe the goof buffs catch that later. Is there by any chance a transcript of the “after film discussion” somewhere? Thanks!

Oh, and I forgot to mention one of the worst potentially fatal mistakes our man makes: He jumps into his life raft with out PFD or anything else, and sure enough he forgets to take food and such – but then he doesn’t cut the raft off the boat but goes to sleep! Great idea! If the boat sinks – and he won’t see this – he certainly goes down too. Is this a filmmaker taking liberties to propel the plot or is this “Worst Marine Seamanship”?

Not sure that a -large- storm jib would be the best in a storm. Rather than taking the time to shave he should have taken all sails, jib and main, off the deck and into the cabin (even well folded and tied, they can always take the wind and foul up the boat!) and put a storm sail on the main, not the jib. Better center of gravity. Then run broadreach. One other thing, we really never saw him sailing!

Christine, I agree. It was odd that he seemed to spend only a few minutes actually sailing the boat.

I wonder whether the wind vane was a simple continuity issue. I have read that they used three Cal 39s – one in the ocean off California, one in a special effects tank in Baja and one for interior shots. There are several scenes where there is no vane and apparently scenes where there is one. Probably one of the boats used for exterior shots had one and the other didn’t.

I’d been looking forward to this movie, and saw it yesterday on it’s opening day in Philadelphia. I was disappointed also. He makes enough stupid mistakes to have died about 5 times over during the course of the film. But where it really lost me was the scene showing him asleep in his hammock over a water level in the boat 2-3 feet above his floorboards. He’s finished his flimsy fiberglass repair on the hull damage, but he’s going to catch a few Z’s before he bothers to pump out the boat – who would do that?

I’m a coastal cruiser with little blue water experience, but I respect those who go off-shore as competent and prepared sailors. “Our Man” is so clueless, I wouldn’t want to go for a day sail with him.

Just to add one more problem from a sailor’s perspective. When he is de-masted it appeared to me that all he did to jettison the mast, something that would need to be done in order to prevent it from bashing a hole in the hull, was cut a rope (a halyard?) with a knife. More realistically, he would have to chop/cut stays and shrouds with bolt cutters/hacksaw. Although showing this in the film would have taken more time, it could have added to the tension, especially considering he had already been washed overboard.

Really enjoyed reading the reviews by experienced sailors here. I saw the movie last night, and wondered how realistic it was. I have zero sailing experience, but I did find myself wondering about the decisions he made. The shaving-in-the-middle-of-a-storm threw me for a loop, but I liked the explanation for given by one of the reviewers here. I also wondered why he waited until the storm was raging to start spreading that big tarpaulin thing across the deck – after all, he did see/hear the storm coming when he was up the mast. I also wondered whether boats typically roll over, and then back over in a storm. I kinda thought that all was lost (pardon the pun!) once it goes bottom up. The life raft rolling over, and then righting itself without sinking seemed extremely implausible, also. Overall, I liked the surreal quality of the movie, despite the gaffs, some of which were apparent even to a non-sailor like me. Would I recommend it, yeah, but not to a sailor. 🙂

Before I go sailing with anyone beyond swimming distance from shore, I’ll have a list of questions ready.

A very little effort by the director could have improved this movie. Any sailor, especially one with some offshore experience and a safety-at-sea course, could have done a lot to make this more realistic.

I stopped trying to keep track of problems a few minutes into the movie; if I had not been with friends, I would gave left.

How this poorly maintained and equipped boat and incompetent skipper got to the Indian Ocean is a mystery.

Not to mention that it would seem that the time to learn about celestial navigation would be prior to leaving shore, not trying to read the book while in a life raft. It seems that he didn’t practice ahead of time any of the tasks he had to do during the movie–managing the life raft, bailing the boat, celestial navigation, having a ditch bag, etc., etc. When you see what can be done with a sports-themed movie like Rush (which, as a racer, I can attest that it paid incredible attention to details about cars, racing, etc.) this one comes up short.

Maybe a new ending – segue to Redford in a hospital in ICU as the heart monitor goes to flatline – the entire movie has been the nightmare of a salor as he dies

It was a great movie, full of entertainment, heart pounding moments, etc. The retired captain (who says he will not see the movie) is missing a great actor doing a fantastic job with a subject the captain, perched 100 feet above the water, probably would never experience. His loss.

There were many mistakes. I’ve done a small amount of blue water sailing (I sail a catboat summers, and typically never get out of sight of land). But some of the scenes brought memories of my blue water sailing (and a capsize) most people would never otherwise experience. So I give it two thumbs up, mistakes and all!

I just saw this movie tonight and as a simple day sailor I too was at first distracted by the flaws on the technical side of otherwise marvelous movie. I can’t help wondering after reading comments if macho foolishness was indeed Intended –By the writer, the director and the actor –to be a major part of Robert Redford’s character. As you see and feel him thinking about his next step each time he faces a problem, you know that he hasn’t imagined the problem or the correct action to take. One needn’t be a sailor to know that any good sailor with a normal healthy Respect for the sea would have anticipated the storm conditions he met (Even if not rammed). In his opening diary he says “I did my best” and he did, when he had to, but the tragedy of the film is he started doing it too late.

I spend a good deal of time in Baja so I enjoyed the credits immensely. I recognized places and restaurants and I trust the Mexican economy loved the production. As a life long sailor, boat owner, boat builder and film aficionado, I had technical problems. I’ve lived in that part of the world and it is hot hot hot so no dodger or Bimini would be brutal. I have seen some rigged self steering but lines wrapped around the helm, I didn’t understand. I’ve never used a drogue, sea anchor, myself, and I know a debate exists, but my thought is lay it off the bow, dragging the vessel into the wind is what would be the preference. Maybe under certain conditions, under reefed sail and high seas one might throw astern, to slow the vessel, but I think normally one would want to stay to weather. Maybe that’s why the boat rolled over. I was trying to figure out. How was he going to hoist a huge “storm jib” with the furling jib still attached? I believe one would want to go forward and take that roller down first. One water jug. Wow, not much. I thought he should have a dingy, at least. Oh, wait he never goes ashore. Sleeping in the forepeak, most uncomfortable spot on the vessel at sea, but whatever. I really wanted to go sailing, for at least a few minutes, oh well. I will say excellent acting, to be sure, and absolutely great cinematography and award winning sound and music, that was stunning. As a sailor, I was disappointed, jogging shoes, maybe, but not comfortable at sea. I could find the lack of seamanship tolerable but I didn’t feel like that was the point so I keep struggling with what’s up here. “Our Sailer,” seems too informed to be so uninformed. SOS SOS, I believe it’s “Mayday Mayday.” How does a 39 foot vessel capsize, turtle, for over ten seconds, with an open companionway hatch and not completely fill with water? How come the floor boards aren’t floating around? We already saw they weren’t fastened. No Jack lines? Really? Diving into the raft and leaving it tethered to the vessel for a good nights sleep? A dismasting that doesn’t include hacking through shrouds and stays? You mean you can release the mast by knifing through a single sheet? It just went on and on for me. I was captivated by the acting, cinematography, direction, and music though. Shaving and then bandaging his face under extremely stressful circumstances didn’t fit. I longed for a sailing movie that included sailing and attention to details that matter to a mariner.

Unbelievable LAZINESS by the filmmaker. Obvious disregard for the intelligence of the audience. I was aghast not 5 minutes into this film and it degraded from there. They could have hired any weekend sailor to consult and make this film even remotely plausible. Kindergarten level of understanding of the subject. Don’t waste your time. SOS! SOS! Er……MAYDAY! Hahahahahaha All that money and zero sense.

I just saw the matinee showing of “All is Lost” at the AMC Fashion Valley in San Diego. I was the youngest person in the theater and I’m 51! Ha, ha. Seriously, I didn’t take the time to read all the great comments made on this site ahead of mine, but although there are some issues with getting the nautical details of the film right, I do believe that only real recreational sailors, ex-Navy Men and SUNY Maritime grads (I’m all three) will have noticed some of them. Don’t be too hard on this movie, it’s still an incredible Tour de Force by Robert Redford. Having said that, the three issues I noticed are: 1) The disconnected VHF antenna on top of the mast has nothing to do with the fact that the radio is fried, 2) Having the life raft tied to a boat that could sink at any second is a bad move (although maybe Robert could have actually made this mistake in real life), and (saving the best for last), 3) How did the shrouds, fore stay and back stay all get conveniently severed during the dismasting? All Robert had to do is to cut the halyard with his handy, dandy Bo’sun’s knife and the mast is underway, making way heading for the horizon at best speed. Really? Lastly, a question; I don’t know the answer to it: Is a life raft REALLY that flammable? I smell a lawsuit. But…I loved the movie anyways.

That’s all I’ve got. Speckhahn out, standing by on Channel 16…

now that my busy season is over, i hope to see soon this and re-read all your comments. -tom

Just want to comment that I’m a non-sailor and yet several of this inconsistencies occurred to me, too – so I disagree with the commenter above who said ‘only we sailors will notice these things, the general public will think it’s all accurate’. Not at all. I wondered why there was no sort of emergency beacon, for example, in the boat or in the life raft. I would assume that is standard equipment in this day of advanced communication and GPS. I questioned why he would leave the raft roped to the sinking boat. Why he would try to put up the ‘storm jib’ at the height of the storm. Why he was never wearing a life jacket of any kind. Why he didn’t have more water. Why he gave up fishing after the sharks stole his one fish! How the boat would not fill up with water when it capsized. How he could go to sleep in his improvised hammock with unpumped water around him. So many of these questions I think will occur to anyone, you don’t have to have sailing experience. More unrealistic than any of these is how Robert Redford – whom I like and respect as an actor and an activist, and whom I enjoyed in this movie – could keep his hair in place through every scene, including underwater! I kept waiting for some revealing glimpse of his real hairline, but it was carefully obscured for the entire movie. Incredible! Also, since he was studying his book on celestial navigation, it would have been a nice touch to have at least one scene involving the stars… I don’t think we saw those once during the movie. I’m sure they would be awesome in the middle of the ocean, right sailors?

Sorry, forgot one more – how he could so easily get back in his boat after being washed overboard. Even a landlubber like me has spent enough time swimming off of boats to know it’s very hard to get back in if you’re not using the ladder – practically impossible to scale that sloping hull, right? And during a storm?

I’m perfectly willing to believe that most of the seamanship issues happen all of the time. I found it hilarious when he pulled out his celestial navigation book.

My biggest question was about the boat rolling a full 360 degrees… twice! Could that really happen? Like a previous poster, I was under the impression that turtled boats stayed upside down. The first time it went over, he was below deck, but didn’t appear to get much wetter.

The Cal 39, which were the boats they used to film the movie, have deep fin keels and 6,600 pounds of ballast, which is about 45% of her entire displacement, so there is a good chance that she will roll right-side up if she capsizes. Rolling 360 degrees without losing the mast seems unlikely. I am reasonably sure that he left the hatch open the second time she rolled and she didn’t seem to take on nay water then either. Very few of the details in the movie made much sense on examination.

The other day, my son had invited me to the movie thinking that I would enjoy it, but being a blue water sailor (44′ oa full keel ketch) as well as a retired Royal Canadian Naval Commanding Officer, I left the movie theatre deeply disturbed at the large number of basic seamanship skill errors, inconsistencies, and licensing oversights. In Canada, for instance, one has to have a radio license to operate a VHF-FM transceiver (exam required) [SOS vs MAYDAY?]

Several times, I couldn’t contain myself and, whispering, I had to point out to him things that I had observed. As we left the theatre, I made a comment that I would love to give the film’s “technical advisor” an earful!

I checked the wiki website, but the site didn’t reveal the advisor. I will not see it again to find out who the incompetent was!

Was looking forward to this movie; just saw it; gave up counting the errors/oversights/omissions and hoped it would just be a good movie ride. Was disappointed in this as well: Redford seemed to be, well, Redford acting in a movie, as if he knew this one wasn’t going anywhere. The ending itself was illogical on at least two levels (I won’t spoil it here) and then, finally, Michelangelo’s “the hand of god” and a flash of searing celestial light? Really?

Very careless film-making and one-dimensional acting make this one a pass. Good thing I saw it on “Cheap Tuesday”.

Besides all of the comments before me, and even disregarding sailors and sailing in general, a guy wakes up alone in the center of the Indian Ocean with two feet of water in the salon to slowly blink himself awake and slowly walk forward to investigate the cause with nary a peep? Personally I talk to myself while preparing dinner and I’d surely be waking up whales had I been our solo sailor in the Cal 39. Even if I were tied safely to a dock, the kids in the local flotilla a marina away would be learning strings of new words had I woke to sloshing!

Thanks for your analysis… all of those errors and omissions bothered me too, starting with the boat being dry after rolling, DUH?? The sad thing is all my friends will be freaked out about sailing when all the sailor needed was a simple EPIRB or a Spot… it was totally avoidable loss of life.

My experience with boats is limited to the ones that hold the gravity, yet I noticed some of the omissions noted by the real sailors on this website.

I also thought the storm was oddly inconsistent at times, raging on the outside, yet rather calm indoors.

The movie also disappointed me in missing so many wonderful opportunities to play “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.”

It just didn’t seem like an authentic Redford picture, being bereft of that soundtrack.

I just saw this today after hearing so many positive things about it (from landlubbers). I have been on the Ocean for nearly 50 years, including 4 years US Navy. At first I was surprised at the lack of authentic portrayals of many things show, then I started looking at it from another direction. I have met quite a few “Cruisers” that were starting out, and were nearly as badly trained, prepared, and equipped as the movie presented. I then took it in stride watching the movie as the game; “What’s wrong with this Picture”, looking for problems and thinking how would I respond or prepare differently. I found it to be fun (in a self promoting way). It turned out to be an enjoyable exercise in remembering many of the cruising basics, which honestly I don’t think about as often as I probably should. Yes it could have been much better, even if the Director had just read a few good Sailing books and took a safe boating course. I think the most important thing that others should glean from this movie is; there still are many people out there boating; trained, prepared and equipped in a similar way. Be very happy that you are able to detect the flaws. 70+ year old Redford does a great job of acting, but they should have started the movie portraying him as buying his first big boat to get away from it all. Then many of the flaws would be very believable.

Great review and great comments. Still worth a look in spite of the issues.

Read all the comments, bemused, as someone with fair deep blue experience I thought it was pretty good.

Okay, on some of the technical problems: They could have just declared a date in say, the 1980’s and goodby EPIRB, GPS, and bunch of other stuff. Others… I was confused by the mast climb. I have no clue why you would want a jib over a [deeply reefed] main or bare poles. Damage Control 101 would have had me packing that hole with cushions, or at least backing up the patch with SOMETHING. I think those lines from rafts are sometimes tear-away. I’d have stayed teethered to the boat, it was his primary hope of rescue. Flares in daylight… he had a fricking mirror and could have directed flashing light at the bridge, it’s why they’re called signal mirrors. My harness is part of my PFD, I think it actually costs more to get them separately. Yeah, I laughed at the West Marine boat hook, he laughed all the way to the bank with the product placement. Killing half a bottle of whiskey would not have been my first, second, or third instinct.

BUT, I found much of it, even his mistakes, credible. I’ve known any number of boozehounds that sail a tramp boat and live on diddly. The point was that it wasn’t a well equiped boat of a rich man with easy answers. I think it was all a metaphor for how we deal with bad things when they happen. I’d see it again, and probably will. Next time I hope I can avoid getting caught in trivia.

I’ve done a fair amount of sailing, but no cruising. I thought the movie incredibly well done, and a great watch… if you are not a sailor. First off, where’s the engine? Yeh, his nav station got soaked from the initial collision with the container, but how did that fry all the electrics? Then the business with the storm jib. He *knows* the storm is coming, yets screws around and shaves. Why not pull off all the canvas, as somebody else suggested? I couldn’t really tell how big the storm jib was, but waiting until things are in an uproar was way too late. And, the big one for me, it sure looked as if the boat turned turtle at least once and then righted itself. Is this possible? All that canvas dragging in the water surely would prevent it. This may be my lack of experience with bigger boats- 24′ is about my max. The other thing that bugged me was the whole business with the sextant and the map. He had *no* idea where he was to start with, had apparently never used a sextant before, teaches himself how to do so, and then is making precise little X marks on the map? Not a skill I possess, so I’ll defer to those that do know if I’m wrong here. And finally, no Very Pistol in the survival gear?

My wife and I saw “All is Lost” this weekend and were both disappointed….not so much for the lack of sailing realism (we both have been sailing for over 30 years) but for the lack of character development. What would motivate an older person to single hand a sailboat when he was clearly unprepared and inexperienced as described in the excellent reviews above (e.g., going off shore without an EPIRB is just idiotic in my opinion). There was (or should have been) a story behind this movie that could have taken it to another level. I would give it two stars at most.

I’m by no means a bluewater veteran but have spent enough time offshore to be seriously distracted by some of what I saw in ALL IS LOST. The lack of prep bothered me even more than than the character’s actions once things start to go south, which can be chalked up to fatigue and/or shock. But, how does he not have a ditch bag packed with emergency food, water and a handheld VHF? The list goes on and on…

That being said, I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. Movies like this – that speak to a small, dedicated subculture like climbing, sailing, etc. – are few and far between so people who participate in such outdoor pursuits should try their best to enjoy them, warts and all.

oh come on its a really good movie! its a MOVIE! the EPIRB is easy – you dont understand the back story – he exchanged it for a cigar smoking Oran Utang in Sumatra and then the damn thing fell overboard. You should have known that – call yourself an Old Salt! Also when he casts of from the boat for the last time you can see a damaged windvane self steering system. My only gripe was that between storms there were no waves but then it was filmed in a tank – its a MOVIE!

Lots of great comments here. One I haven’t seen yet is that anyone who has sailed through a storm knows that the morning after doesn’t look like a sunny Sunday morning on the mill pond. The waves are still large and confused but the wind is often gone, making for truly miserable conditions, especially if the engine is kaput. Overall, it felt like they wanted the average land lubber to sit there and ask themselves what would they do in that situation. And then Redford does nearly everything, about as the landlubbers would have done it – and as slowly. As a few people already said, if you wake up and there is water inside and a hole in the hull, you move fast and yell a lot and do anything at all to stuff the hole for the moment – now! Jeez, people Redford’s age move faster if their cat pees on the rug. And lastly, all the non-sailing friends and relatives of any blue-water sailor are scared enough when someone they know leaves to cross an ocean. Movies like this only reinforce their fears of the unknown. Boy will we hear about it now…

why did he shave???

When we were kids we used to avidly watch cowboy movies to see if we could tick off the flaws. eg; wrist watches on Indians: tyre tracks in the desert dust: no sweat stains on stetsons, etc etc. We were very clever kids 🙂 Alas! We were so busy carping that we often could not tell anyone what the plot was. Consider this: A man leaves home; he catches the bus by waiting prudently at the bus stop and he is polite to everyone he meets. On his return journey he repeats his circumspect behaviour. No errors: no stuff -ups. Could you write a gripping story around this? I once was attempting to read a book while steering a well found 20 foot sloop by the feel of the breeze on my cheek. It was a glorious day with a steady South Easter of about 8 knots; all hatches were open to air the boat after a month closed up on a mooring. After a particularly gripping chapter I looked up to see a small line squall racing at me about 2 miles off. I just had time to put the boat before the wind and soften the blow by running off. This course took me through some overfalls and a few seas broke over the bow and found their way below. Absolutely, irresponsibly stupid behaviour with a catalogue of errors to put Robert Redford to shame…..But is WAS exciting! And, you could have written a story about it; even if only to allow people to exercise their critical faculties.

Worst fiberglass hull repair ever? One layer of glass over that huge hole? Did anyone think that would hold? And slopped way past the hole in what seemed a huge waste. Some plywood salvaged from the cabin screwed to the inside and then glassed from the outside seems the better way to go.

Holy landlocked director! My girlfriend (who grew up in Indiana) would have done a better job with continuity on this film! Some parts were almost laughable in their absurdity. Too bad because “All is lost” could have been great movie. …..I still enjoyed it though.

By the way, when you do celestial nav during the day, all you get during is a line (on which you are somewhere). You don’t get an ‘X’. If you do a second ‘line of position’ — say 4 hours apart — you can then advance the first line by your guesstimated drift speed and direction, and then the two lines will cross to give you a rough position fix. At night, if you ‘shoot’ two or more stars, you can get a reasonable fix, but this can only be done just a sunset, or just at sundown (because you need to be able to see the horizon also) and you have to know where to look for the stars. It’s not very realistic that you could learn that by reading a thin owners manual. Still, unlike many others, I enjoyed the film, despite a bit too much ‘Hollywood’.

I’m not a sailor but some of the technical faults of the movie were still evident to me and prevented me from enjoying it fully. They made me look up for exactly this post, to confirm my suspicions so thank you Rick for posting this entry.

After reading also the coments (especially NYCSwashbuckler’s) there is still one question bugging me: is it realistic that two container ships pass so close and both fail to either notice or care for our man’s signals? Isn’t there some capital sea law they broke?

There are many accounts of ships whose lookouts that failed to see small liferafts, even though they passed not far away. No doubt the proximity of the ships was made closer in the movie for dramatic effect but it was not wholly unrealistic. Of course ,if the sailor had had any modern gear — an EPIRB, a Personal Locator Beacon, or even a handheld VHF radio, he would have been rescued.

I saw the movie last night and I enjoyed it. I believe Robert Redford’s character was intentionally not well prepared for his journey. He did not have a bilge pump handle! His character seemed to be getting away from something, life perhaps. Maybe he did not want to be found hence no EPIRB. Maybe there was not a great deal of planning for this voyage, although he got to where he was from someplace. I believe the filmmaker did a great job of showing how little some of the equipment was used, for example, did you notice how fresh the line looked for the bosun’s chair? Also fresh line on the sea anchor. The character strikes me as someone who learned to sail later in life, getting out of his paradigm by sailing away from something.

All great comments on the technical/safety issues with the film. A couple more crits though on purely cinematic issues. If a harness has just saved you after being washed overboard (even one foolishly secured to the lifeline) why would you take it off and never use it in heavy weather again? If your radio is suffering from obvious short-circuiting why climb the mast to check the antenna connection? Why start a fire (at all!) and shield it from view of your rescuer? And what is your rescuer doing in a 12-footer alone at night so far from land, unless he is as foolish and unlucky as you?

Excellent comments on the technical deficiences of the film makers, but I do think some of you have missed the essential premise of the film – that this is science fiction, not reality. Clues? 1) The container is alive but not very clever! First it attacks the sailboat in the side abaft the beam and above the waterline. It should have gone for the killer blow below the waterline. 2) The sea anchor is alive too! When RR so bravely attaches the sea anchor to the back of the container, it zooms off backwards to pull the container away (either that or the container started off again, taking both it and the sailboat away from the sea anchor) 3) The water isnt like earth water. In the film, as the boat fills with water, it floats higher in the water, not lower, enabling the hole to rise above the water-level. This water also rejects any humans that fall into it, so that RR is twice thrown out of the water back into the boat. This might also account for the fact that the container floats with its back door open. 4) The boat is propelled by a force unknown on earth in the absence of any working sails and clearly no engine of the earthly kind. 5) There is an unseen alien aboard. Most of the time the alien is benign, helpfully steering the boat when RR is resting, but sometimes it just gets nasty and disconnects the VHF aerial at the masthead for fun, although pointlessly so since the radio doesnt work anyway. A lot of RR’s problems can be attributed to this alien. (actually I half-believe our boat has one too) 6) RR is clearly not a human as we know them. He is perfectly calm when his boat is sinking, shows little emotion throughout his troubles, able to learn astro-navigation in extremis, has an internal atomic clock and GPS to enable him to get a perfect fix from a single sun-sight. 8) The planet is not Earth or not Earth in the 21st century. Ship traffic has so increased in volume that in addition to the well-known Traffic Separation Schemes in areas of high shipping density like the English channel, Singapore Strait and Straits of Gibraltar, there is now a massive one right through the Indian ocean. This can only be because, post apocalyse, Madagascar is now the centre of the Western world and vast numbers of ships now ply the Madagascar/Sumarta route 9) The liferaft is also self-propelled. The daily run of this craft are about the same as we managed to achieve in a 39ft cruiser (not a Cal 39 I’m glad to say) in our 3 year circumnavigation

Perhaps I’m wrong, but surely no film production team could have accidentally deviated for earthly physics, sailing practice and human common sense. Mind you, it was low budget ($9 million) with a very small team (only about 400) so it is understandable that it would be impossible to involve anyone who had actually been blue-water cruising if they had wanted to make a film about a lone yachtsman. I guess they decided to go after the Gravity market instead.

“Our Man” apologies at least 4-5 times in his farewell letter. Why? What is he sorry for?

The errors are very intentional. They tell the story of the man. I’m not a sailor and I could tell some things didn’t make sense (his radio not being waterproof, ramming the container, shaving, putting up a sail in a storm, no life vest, seemingly improper clothing.)

So if it’s THAT obvious, and there’s an entire industry of movie consultants at the filmmaker’s disposal, then we can be rest assured Our Man’s mistakes expose him as arrogant, ill-prepared, and ultimately sorry for it.

I think they filmmaker is smarter than we’re giving him credit for.

Hi Folks, came across this web site later. I had previously commented on other sites along the lines of many of the predictable observations among the foregoing thoughtful comments. I am a circumnavigator and have presented many seminars at yacht clubs and about 8 times at the Toronto boat show. Much of my focus has been on how we did the voyage and how we stayed out of trouble.

I won’t add any observations to those already made except one: why is it that a director fails to get decent technical advise to assist in getting the facts right? Is it arrogance? Possibly, or just plain blithe ignorance?

One thing sprung to my mind as I watched it. Would the boat actually sink? I have sailed dinghys in my youth (Wayfarer) and they have air tight compartments to give buoyancy. I’ve never sailed larger boats. Do larger yachts, such as the one in the film, not have these?

Great comments above. One new one: the lazy and incompetent filmmaker sets the tone with the very first storyboard. This states that the action takes place “1700 miles from the Sumatra Straights.” Yes, “Straights”! Our filmmaker has managed to make 3 mistakes in about 6 words: 1. “Straights” should be “Straits.” 2. There are no Sumatra Straits; what he means is the Sunda Strait or the Straits of Malacca, but he was too lazy to look at a globe. 3. 1700 miles could be in any direction; he should say “1700 miles west of the Sunda Strait.”

As noted, the lack of a back story makes the character much less interesting than he could be.

All in all, I think that this film tells us much more about the character of the producer, screenplay writer and director than about the character on screen. All are similar: lazy procrastinators who don’t do their homework, and bring disaster upon themselves.

Both Redford and Chandor had anticipated criticisms from the sailing community. Viewers who’ve seen related interviews and stories about the writing and making of the film may’ve learned that Maritime advisors were employed on the set throughout the process. More importantly, both filmaker and actor repeatedly declare, “The character is a sailor, not an expert sailor, who makes mistakes.” Few know in advance how many mistakes could be inadvertently made in a crisis, which is why we have the word “Accident’ in our vocabulary. The drama is then created as we share the protagonists reactions to the situation at hand. I love the film as a work of art standing distinctive in its gallery of world films; no CGI, no miniatures, animation, fast scene breaks between blue screen fantasies. In place of the typical film tools most of Hollywood employs today we see instead,real time stunt work performed by the actor, expert acting so crafted as to draw the viewer aboard ship without even a dialogue! The beauty lies in the ability to create a story telling palette of the utmost simplicity. I found it so refreshing, so enthralling, I forgot about the absence of tools most action-adventure film makers use today. Superb craftmanship. I think we all can appreciate the quality of a superb master craftsman (Redford) without criticizing the sailors vs. actors choices. One post script; living in Hawaii, I can no longer count the numbers of inexperienced “owners”, taking to the vast Pacific as “sailors”. Frightening!

i had a very similar experience, i kept telling myself its meant as metaphor for life watch it as a metaphor

All good comments on this film and it makes me wonder how they raise so much money without wondering about the story. If the movie is for sailors then get the details right – shipping containers don’t move rapidly around the ocean smashing sideways into yachts in calm seas – If its for land lubbers – then get the story right with emotional content and engaging narrative. Why they could not have had Robert thinking out aloud is a mystery. Just having a volunteer blue water cruiser around to advise would have made this movie so much better. Did you notice the headsail hardly moving in the ‘storm’? little details matter when they are so much part of the story. I am amazed the directors did not realise this. However this movie would make an excellent training video with students pointing out the mistakes. For the record he could have loosely tied up to the container and done a better fix it job while the bilge pumps were working OR more engaging would have been to have a heritage wooden boat as the object of attention. I continually talked through the movie to my sailing partner about the errors and for that I apologise…

I can’t believe that none of you “Old Salts” picked up the fact that Redford never actually operates his sextant. All he does is squint through the telescope and never actually operates the arc on the instrument in order to measure the sun’s altitude. He simply clutches the instrument in the half swung position that it has to be in to stow in its’ case. If he’d just read the set of the current off the chart and used that to estimate his little x’s that would have at least made some logical sense. Along with the legion of other technical gaffs that have been cited by others this film is a technical disaster. If they had a technical advisor he should be stood up against a wall and shot. Granted there are lots of idiots who, in the absence of real knowledge and with grandiose ideas, put out to sea, but you cannot plausibly portray a grizzled old salt and an idiotic neophyte sailor at the same time. Worst sailing movie ever!

Thank you James for finally commenting on the sextant. That was one of teh most distracting errors for me. If it was possible to squint at one for a split second and know where I was on the planet I would carry one in my car, or maybe tied to my belt.

All of the other comments were dead on. But the really poor decisions were what got me for the most part. Even my wife – who is not a sailor in any way and just “goes along for the ride” pointed out things she couldn’t believe. The biggest for me were –

Start the engine. Immediately. Nah, let’s just stare at the hole for a while. We don’t need no stinkin’ electricity.

Slosh around in the cabin and on deck and attend to EVERYTHING except filling the gaping, bleeding hole with something. How about a cabin cusion? One of the other sails? ANYTHING to stop the water from pouring through even if it’s not tight enough to completely plug it. At least slow it down.

Patch the hole with – overlayed 1 foot square sheets of fiberglass? How about using the fiberglass to secure one of the interior cabinet doors or anything else to the holl over the hole. Might be a LITTLE stronger.

Run up the storm jib AS the storm is raging – great idea. We won’t lose the sail to the wind, or damage it, or get blown over the side. Nah.

Fish around in the sinking boat to recover – the sextant. Don’t know how to use the sextant, but yeah. That’s important. Not more food, or something to bail out the raft, or lots of other more important things.

And of course – tie the raft to the sinking boat and go to sleep. Maybe he was hoping it would all be over soon and he would just wake up on the trip down when the boat finally went under.

There were a million other little things, too many to list. Dumb little things like using a crescent wrench to tighten the ROUND ferrule on the VHF antenna. There was no water pouring in through the companionway hatches when the boat went upside down. The list goes on and on for me. Redford was great of course, but his performance was not enough to distract me from the glaring mistakes, most of which were simple. Could have been a great story with better attention to detail.

Maybe they should have hired one of us as a film consultant!

One mistake I noted was that he threw the sea anchor off the STERN !! Isn’t the sea anchor supposed to be tethered off the BOW so that the boat faces bow into the wind. The way it was lashed to the stern, he would have had following seas, waves and wind beating against the least seaworthy part of the boat, the stern.

*** As a very novice sailor, as well as being a woman with no mechanical experience, I annoyed my husband while watching this movie because I kept making comments and asking rhetorical questions into empty living room space, questions about a boat rolling around upside-down with hatch wide open, yet not filling with water. Also, the scene where he literally pushes the boat back upright — 7,000 lb ballast + boat for 19,000 lbs — all by himself. The boat in the movie represents very much the 1978 Cal 39…look it up…hatch and all look identical. Like yourselves, I enjoyed the movie. It truly IS an ode to “The Old Man and the Sea.” Redford deserved an Oscar nomination for his role. Hollywood is letting politics play too large a part in the selection of movies via The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, because only politics would account for Redford not receiving a nomination. Great flick. ***

Yes, there were all of those technical blunders. But, honestly, what got me was that this guy was at sea a couple of days with gold plated survival gear, seems to have seen 3 ships within a day or two, and he writes a suicide note and gives up. A guy named Poon Lim survived for 133 days in 1942 with not a tenth of what this guy had. I pretty much lost any sympathy for him.

I very much looked forward to seeing the movie. I felt a somewhat personal connection as I owned a Cal 39 for 10 years, and put many thousands of miles of blue water under her keel. We sailed her through a force 10 storm at sea, eventually heaving to with 3 reefs in the main and tiny storm jib. By the way, heaving to worked great; once we did this, the boat rode out the storm with ease. This is a tried and true storm tactic. I can assure you that the Cal 39 is a very strong and seaworthy boat.

Once I got past all the many inaccuracies, mistakes and paradoxes in the movie, correctly pointed out by other commenters, I found I really enjoyed the story and the film. I consider myself both an experienced and fortunate sailor. I have made lots of mistakes and have had the great fortune (thus far) to have survived to learn from them all, wiser and humbler. I have also had the good fortune to have been able to learn from great sailors more experienced than I, especially when we were in the s**t.

I choose to enjoy the movie for what it is rather for for what it isn’t. There is always a bigger storm or a (life threatening) situation we personally have not yet experienced and who among us has not made mistakes that look ridiculous with perfect 20-20 hindsight. This is not a story of the expert sailor competently overcoming impossible odds or eventually suffering failure despite doing everything right; there are plenty of great true stories of this. Rather, it is the story of an Everyman, calming blundering his way through situations beyond his experience and current skills. I very much liked the ending. I respected his willingness to risk it all and live (or die) like you have nothing to lose.

I’m surprised no one has mentioned the lack of a whistle or air-horn on the life-raft. That would have saved him, twice.

The movie pissed me off at first, but in hindsight, I think it may be an intentional demonstration of what poor seamanship (and possibly inexperience) can lead to.

(It’d make a great training video, for students to spot the mistakes. It almost seems made for that. I’ve got a renewed respect for having an air-horn on hand at all times.)

Other than the stupid things he did, I didn’t spot a lot of major technical errors.

I’d like to know how a big keelboat like that stays upside down that long with a couple of tons of lead in its keel (but maybe with the waves and the sail up the mast, it could happen for a bit; seemed unnatural though).

Most of the other things that made me yell at the screen were consequences of his actions. It was so excessive, it had to be intended as educational. (In Redford’s 77 years, I’m sure he’s personally absorbed more sailing knowledge than that.)

I think that might be the moral, here, too; it wasn’t the container hit that killed him, but his actions in response. Bad decisions. (Over. And over. And over again.)

I wonder if, other than his poor actions and missing equipment, there were other things placed in the movie to indicate that he might not be as seasoned a sailor as his years may suggest.

Unboxing an unused gift sextant and trying to learn how to use it is a major one, really. (And then laying it pointy-sides down on the lift raft while you slept. Yikes.)

Rather than being distracting from the amazing visuals and great acting, I think his screw-ups were really the point of the movie.

I watched this on the plane last night and I enjoyed it. I wondered what sailors might think and my search brought me here.

I can’t help but comment. I feel that so many of you are completely missing the point. This is not an instructional video on how to properly sail solo across the Indian Ocean. The narration sets it up right at the very beginning – he says he is sorry and he says it was his fault. It is about a man who goes to sea in a boat without really knowing what he is doing. That’s why he’s bemused when he sees the water, not conducting precisely the right emergency technique. That’s why he has to read the instructions on the flares, and why he looks so carefully at all the other gear that he breaks out, seemingly for the first time ever.

I liked this film – a story of that one man and his downfall at the hands of his own ill-preparedness and lack of real knowledge. There is also a backstory, set up in the opening narration, that suggests (as others noted above) he is running from something, perhaps his family.

All the nitpicking and “I’m such an experienced sailor, I would never do this and that” is interesting but for me, it completely misses the point. Seen as a story, and allowing for a bit of cinematic licence (every film needs this or it is either too long or too boring), I think this is a very solid film.

And if you must, if you can’t just enjoy it as a film, then use it as an instructional video like this: “watch this and do everything the opposite of what this guy did”.

Right from the get-go I began talking to myself! How could he not let out some kind of exclamation when he saw his boat filling up with water and finding a gaping hole in the topsides? While, I too was distracted by the obvious inaccuracies and unrealistic conditions, what flabbergasted me the most was the idea that a human could undergo such trying circumstances without uttering a word… to himself, to his boat, to God… whatever. I kept telling myself that it was a movie and it appeared that the main intent of this movie was to have no dialogue…but, to me, a story of a silent lone sailor is like a story of a tree falling in the woods without making a sound.

I too tend to talk to myself when single-handling. I also would have experienced a much wider range of emotion than the fairly monotonic character played by Redford. With all the wonderful curse words available in the English language, it seems bizarre to waste them all.

Ummm , start the engine and drive off the container ? No float switch on the pump ?

What the holy hell – why did he intentionally head butt the mast ? Lol. That was the worst Acting I’ve ever seen ! No swell , no shift , just a fake fall into the mast ! Three or four times when it appeared he was done for , I sighed and thought this idiot deserved it Oh – An SOS Call ? Lol really ? Is it 1911 ? With a radio hooked up to a battery lying on its side . No acid leaking ? I feel pretty stupid , I’ve tinkered with celestial Navigation using a sextant and admittedly still couldn’t find my location in Barnegat bay on a sunny day , but this guy reads the instructions and aces it in 5 minutes ? My IQ level dropped as I watched

Oh man – let me get a nice close shave as the squall approches and ill douse sail when the storm is raging

all the tension was my wanting to shout at ‘the man’ to respond appropriately to the emergencies as they unfolded……..for a sailor, this was a very frustrating movie to endure

I’m just a weekend sailor and about a million things frustrate me with this movie. The one thing none of the other post have brought up and maybe I just don’t know any better is how easily the container ripped such a large hole in a blue water boat?? I mean really?? When he surveyed the damage the fiberglass just flopped around and looked like it was nothing. My islander 32 fiberglass is like a 1/2″ thick! I’ve tried tearing up a lake boat with backhoe on solid ground and that really put up a fight. Just a thought.

I can explain away a lot of the mistakes. His EPIRB was malfunctioning, his handheld VHF floated out the hole, he was hooking up his antenna before he tried the radio again. I can even explain that there is no indication that he doesn’t know how to navigate with a sextant. If I haven’t done something in a while, I’ll typically do a little reference reading too. Also, “Mayday Mayday Mayday” is reserved for when the situation is life threatening. A patched hole and a broken radio doesn’t seem that dire, but SOS? That’s just poor writing.

What I can’t explain is why the hell he’d get off the boat onto the container while the jib is still up. A gust of wind and you’re left stranded with nothing but a rope burn. He does that, not once, but twice!

Having just seen “All is lost’ for the first time ( a borrowed DVD) I can honestly say that “Waterworld ” is no longer the worst sailing film ever made. All is lost – is a lesson in stupidity.

On re-watching, some of the sailing sequences in “Waterworld” almost, if not quite, made up for the rest of the nonsense, as least to my eyes. I suspect that I will find all the idiocy in “All is Lost” too hard to ignore if I should ever see the movie again.

Now I know what to do in a sailboat in the middle of the ocean with a big storm approaching. Shave.

WHy wouldnt the Marit Maersk or the next vessel in the shipping channel see this raft on radar? THe Maersk vessel was very close to him in daylight. How would someone on the bridge not see a bright yellow raft? What about the second vessel – they didnt see two flares in the dark sky? But I do love that Mr.Redford shaved while his boat was sinking. Unbelievable.

I just finished watching All is Lost. I agree with the writer above about the worst acting. The funniest part was when he was inside the boat and lost his balance. then he crazily runs into that post mentioned above. There was a cartoon sound made when he did this. I swear it sounded like the Three Stooges. Anyone know about what that could have been? I coulnd’t stop laughing.

Hi, I thought there were continuity issues. But I think the issues in the form of “why did he not have or do such and such instead” seemed partly because this person was someone who had just bought a boat and sailed without too much experience. There seemed to always be a sense that he was a child with some money to spend undertaking a task that really was bigger than he imagined. To argue why he did not use a different sail in a given situation is arguing against the whole point of this person’s character which is developed specifically without flashbacks by intention.

Hi, Saw it 2 days ago. The very beginning made me suspicious: 13. July, close to equator, 4.50 PM and the sun is already gone. I understand that they wanted to portray him as a beginner sailor, but this is basic geography. I can’t stand that kind of mistakes.

Just saw the movie on a rental DVD. I am not a sailor and have never been in the Navy, but I do know the value of a flashlight and a mirror for survival. How about collecting rainwater? And I know enough not to start a fire in a plastic jug, in a life raft. I loved reading the reviews here, but I gotta say I thought Redford’s character deserved to die and earn a Darwin Award!

Hey, I have a great idea: If you have not already seen the movie and want to enjoy it, read this first:

The main character, played by Robert Redford, is a rather dull-witted, but reasonably successful owner of a small chain of hairdressing salons, built and left to him by his father, in his hometown of Norfolk, Nebraska. His only hobby is astronomy, and he spends hours with his telescope making notes and looking at comets, etc. Later, this comes in handy.

Having spent a lifetime land-locked and under the influence of a late-life divorce and the brain damage caused by a lifetime of hairdressing chemicals, he decides to travel to the west coast and hire a sailor to give him a westward ride around the world to the east coast of the United States. Knowing nothing about how to interview a trans-pacific sailor, the hairdresser ends up hiring a man who, though somewhat experienced and a great self-promoter, is nevertheless a bit of a drunk and careless with his boat, its maintenance and supplies.

During the first part of the trip, the Redford character becomes deeply depressed and stops caring much whether he lives or dies, but he nevertheless learns just a little bit about sailing and some of the security/emergency equipment on the boat. Just a bit, because he’s not too bright—you know, all those chemicals—and because he’s depressed. In exchange for these rudimentary lessons on sailing, Redford cuts the man’s hair.

Somewhere in the Indian Ocean, the old salt dies of a heart attack and the Redford character is forced to bury him at sea.

The movie’s opening scene takes place the next morning.

Now, try to ignore all the other inconsistencies and enjoy the movie.

I hear both sides of this; first, as a sailor, the magnitude and multitude of this sailor’s errors are distressing and second, the viewer should dismiss his errors as examples of his humanity and/or his inexperience and enjoy the movie.

The problem with the second is the first makes it nearly impossible to feel any sympathy or compassion for this character let alone share in his trials and tribulations. The technical mistakes are so gross that they completely take not just any experienced blue-water sailor out of the movie but anybody who’s been on a boat or even has any common sense about them. In addition, that the writers saw no need to develop the character or provide any info on how he got there makes connecting with him even more impossible.

Make no mistake, while the cinematography is pretty good this is no “The Old Man and The Sea”. Because of the missing back story, the complete and utter lack of character development, because of the myriad of technical errors the viewer’s involvement is limited to being a distant observer. Like watching a wreck on the freeway from an overpass, you want to feel sorry for the participants but have a hard time pulling much emotion forward for it.

It got only one Oscar nomination and I suspect even that was gratuitous. Don’t waste your time.

I saw it yesterday. Nice to see afilm with only 1 person and hardly no talk. I was amazed by the amount of continuity errors like amazing quick drying clothes, they even stay dry after being submerged under water. Or carton boxes which dry quickly and after that are as if it has not been under water at all. Even inside all stays dry. There were many details which stay unexplained. I also was surprised how an oceanworthy ship can top over like that, not alone that, it goes upright easily even with sail on. After that you would expect a lot of water inside because the hatch was open. Nope. Pillows can sometimes soak up water and other times float like plastic. The lifcraft stays dry when upside down but runs full when it rains. And so on and so on.

Hmm, so the movie everyone here wants to see is the one where the main character does everything correctly after the collision, starting his engines to pump out the cabin, firing up his still-functioning radio and EPIRB and waiting several hours to be rescued before a storm hits … yes, sounds like an exciting movie to me … 🙂

I’m with Richard (Feb 6th, 2014 posting, above). I saw the film on a flight, and loved it, searched for more information on it and found this blog. I’m not a sailor, but yes I noticed a few things that didn’t make sense. But it’s a movie…you’ve got to suspend your disbelief a bit to enjoy them, otherwise you’ll go mad debating which aspects of the fiction are unreal.

All Is Lost is a film about a man who is escaping his life, who has sought solitude, and who in his own words, tried but failed. This is just one more thing that he’s trying and failing at. And boy does he fail. He is more competent at sea than the average person (just like a boy scout is more competent at orthopedic surgery than the average person is), but he’s got a streak of over-confidence and too-late decision making that makes him the perfect example of someone who is wrong and strong.

The film is about drifting, literally and figuratively. He loses his grip on his situation due to his own poor judgements, and he progressively loses (or gives) everything, until he’s left with nothing else but his life to lose/give. The ending is even unclear. Is he rescued? Or did he die with a vision of being rescued? Or is the arm reaching for him a hand of G_d, bringing him across the threshold to an afterlife (hence the white screen)? The film lets you create your backstory to “our man”, let’s you think about how he got there, why he’s there, where was he going, why he’s so ill prepared for such a journey, etc.

I agree with Richard…many of you are missing the point on this film. If you’re looking for a 100% technically perfect major motion picture film about solo sailing, good luck…you’ll probably die before that one hits the multiplex (because, as Bob comments above, who would want to watch that?). If you’re looking for a story of a man immerses himself in nature to face his own solitude and mortality, who confronts despair while shedding all his possessions on a trajectory toward an unbidden nirvana moment…then maybe this film is one you’d enjoy.

By the way…the shaving scene is completely rational. His stuff is coming apart, he has no control over anything around him and feels he’s at the whims of nature. But this he can control. It’s a routine that all men do nearly daily, and he’s 77, so he’s been doing it for at least 60 years. It gives him a moment to anchor himself, regain some control over a few moments in his life, to immerse himself in a routine, to calm himself for what he has to face next…all these things. We all need simple things like this in time of utter crisis, and shaving is perhaps “our man’s” chaos coping method.

Do all those negative viewers go to see a movie for pleasure or simply to find every detailed fault within —does this happen every time they see a movie ????? Get real !!!!! It was not a true story —–but a good entertaining couple of hours I am a sailer and know the ropes I enjoyed the film —-as a film —–good entertainment

To Len Pullen above:

I would say it happens when you are a person who lives their passion, and, intending to continue to live, has internalized those habits best suited to keeping them alive, that when you watch a movie that takes unnecessary shortcuts with reality, it can be jarring and can take you out of the narrative flow of the movie.

The experience of watching the dramatic and admittedly well-shot (and good sounding; we thought the sound effects were well-composed and mostly “realistic”) visual was therefore akin for these sailors to telling a martial artist to “fall awkwardly” after years of doing breakfalls: it’s incredibly difficult to remember how to do things wrong when doing them right is internalized!

The scene, for instance, where his fallen mast is freed by a couple of swipes of a blade through a halyard has already been mentioned; both my wife and I said simultaneously “where’s the bolt cutters?” Why did he not lift up his flaming half-jerrycan of burning paper, or have it held over the water? Where was his pump handle? Where was his bucket? Where was his ditch bag and EPIRB? Where was his PFD or his jacklines? Why did he sail on port, bringing in yet more water that overtopped his batteries (I assume) to get back to his sea anchor? He could have “chicken-gybed” on starboard to get to the same place!

Sure, it’s easy to be critical, and stressed people screw up things that should be ingrained, but the overall impression is that whatever other qualities “Our Man” had that (ultimately) led to his survival, preparedness and basic seamanship were not uppermost.

And that is what took me right out of a film that could have been better if it didn’t star a non-sailor, and hadn’t been written by a weekend sailor. There were things shown that wouldn’t have made sense to a general audience (how a sea anchor works, for instance), and other things not shown that made a sailing audience cringe.

Coincidentally, we saw “Gravity” last week, and while that film was even more impressive in terms of visuals, the idea that three space stations and the Hubble orbit at the same altitude (also the same altitude and vector as satellite debris, apparently) and *within sight of each other* wrecked that film for me, as well. Space doesn’t work that way, and neither does single-handed sailing, as depicted in “All Is Lost”.

I need to include spoilers in the following reply…

In the end, Our Man died. It’s impossible to drift to a depth of 90 to 100 feet with lungs filled with air fast enough to live and then swim to the surface. Our Man was depressed about something and wanted to escape even into death. He chose an adventure-filled “I-tried-to-live,” “It-wasn’t-my-fault” suicide.

Our Man had enough money to get involved in blue-water sailing beyond his skills and experience. It was his beautiful way to “go out” with dignity; it’s almost heroic.

Thusly, I don’t expect Our Man, who is ready to die, to do the right thing. Before a person jumps from a bridge, the right thing to do is put on a parachute. After a person takes a bottle full of sleeping pills I don’t expect them to scream “Oh my God, I need my stomach pumped” and call 911. From this perspective it’s easy to understand his behavior:

1) He responded slowly to the collision because he was ready to die. He did the right thing by patching the hole, but half-heartedly.

2) He slept without bedding in one of the least comfortable places of his boat because he was depressed and didn’t care.

3) I was thinking, what an idiot using his wrench way up there without tying the cord to his wrist. While the cord was waving in the wind, I was just waiting for it to fall out of his hand into the sea. I thought he was an idiot because I still didn’t understand his feelings.

4) He shaved in preparation to die, just as some vets put on their parade uniform before pulling the trigger on their service weapon. He was thinking about the way they would find his body. He wasn’t thinking about the right thing to do with the storm quickly approaching.

5) He hesitated to throw his message in a bottle because he didn’t want his last message in life to be a lie. He knew something was wrong about what he wrote. He would have found the truth if he shared his feelings with someone.

A lot of the failures after the collision snowballed to his final do-or-die, I-don’t-care, “I tried to do my best” heroic suicide.

I only named a few of Our Man’s senseless behaviors. His ready-to-die careless attitude makes it easy to understand all the other senseless behaviors described in other replies. The mistakes in the movie are another subject. The producers either didn’t have enough resources or, for reasons unknown to me, they were careless.

This was a great movie not only for new-sailor training, but to learn what can happen to a loner afraid to share his feelings. It’s important to take the initiative to get someone to talk about what’s bothering them. Don’t let someone live alone in depression.

…For this, I give five stars to Robert Redford and everyone else who decided to give a part of their life to make this movie.

I’m not a sailor, but work with fiberglass and carbon fiber, and the fixing he did it in his boat was terrible.

The sailor was unlucky he hit a container and it poked a hole just where water poured straight onto his radio. I am not sure what propulsion system the container was using at the time because his boat was becalmed. Going back for the sea anchor on a tack that immersed his hole again was crazy when he knew how to keep it out of the water. Deliberate filling of the boat with more water just to retrieve a piece of non-essential equipment, possible pointer to ego problem of aged can-do retiree? Yes it was a crappy looking patch but good enough to make it to port unless you hit a storm. You need ‘suspension of disbelief’ to enjoy movies and look for reasons why it is OK on a logical level. With enough wind it is possible for a boat to sail just with wind pressure on the hull. A 76 year old man hauls himself out of a heaving ocean with bare hands on a three quarter inch rope back onto his the deck of his yacht and still has the storm jib in his hands too. Only Robert Redford could do that, he could be a retired agent of Shield. Really this film is full of improbable elements like nearly getting run over by ships in a shipping lane that is two hundred miles wide. They can’t find a missing Jumbo Jet in the Indian Ocean let alone a life raft. I really appreciate this site and all the comments by sailors and film lovers. This movie had excellent production values with the underwater tank scenes providing great clarity of Robert Redford holding his breath for incredibly long periods while exerting himself. Even at the end when he incinerated his lifeboat in a cry for help and gave up and sank. He was a good 20 or 30 feet down after 40 seconds before he saw torchlight from above and decided to swim back up. Nobody else but Robert Redford could do that. Maybe Shield have given him gills. When he was a younger man he put the Injuns in their place as ‘Jeremiah Johnson’. As many technical faults this movie has for sailors, ‘Gravity’ is worse by far for any space buff. I was pleased Robert Redford was saved but disappointed the mouthy Sandra Bullock didn’t burn up on re-entry. I really hope they don’t make Sandra Bullock a Shield Agent.

The absolute first thing I would have done was start the diesel and pull away from the container. I’d then drop the sails, and deploy the liferaft. I’d hook a halyard to the liferaft, and flood it for ballast. I’d then winch on the halyard to heel the boat to port so I could patch the hole out of the water. I’d leave the engine running until the bilge pump was done evacuating the water, then shut it down, bail and stow the liferaft, and work on the radio. I’d sail with a main only toward the nearest land. In storms, I’d drop the main and motor at low speed into the waves. I’d spend every waking moment closing the distance to shore.

Just saw this. Comparisons to Gravity are spot-on, and you don’t need to be an expert in either field for the large technical goofs made to goose-up the appeal of the scripts but remove anyone with an active mind from the experience. I’m not a sailor, but when I mountain bike in remote areas, especially solo, I take my $150 Spot satellite tracker/beacon. Just silly he wouldn’t have one or the nautical equivalent. In Gravity the main character is and MD with a dead kid and a broken marriage. Drawn for sympathy, not realism. Her awkwardness in space is supposed to endear her character to the audience. So an MD is hired to repair telecom hardware in space? All the electrical engineer astronauts suddenly vanish? That treats the audience like idiots, and the execs who greenlighted this stuff sure should have put a SME on the payroll- cost 1/1,000 of the actor’s salary. Lazy screenwriting too.

As a retired Naval Officer and Aviator I have long understood the folly of comment about the technical aspects of movies. My sub-specialty of Naval Training further inhibits comments which would be issued in the hope of instructing movie-goers in the safety aspects of activity or profession. And, of course, declarations from my wife about how I “suck all of the fun out of a movie” provide the strongest incentive to shut up and view the cinema in silence.

After reading the comments about this movie there is little doubt why the majority of “rag-baggers” are considered to be the elite snobs of those of us who spend time on the water.

It is a movie, folks, not a safety training flick or a “sailing for dummies” manual. You are supposed to sit quietly, eat your popcorn, drink your coke and invest a couple of hours of your life in fantasy (or at least in interactions or situations in which you will probably not participate in real life).

Oh yes, please turn off your smart phone. If the Coast Guard needs your assistance they will undoubtedly send someone to retrieve you.

When the range of stupid errors and mistakes got so damn distracting, the movie turned from drama to comedy.

Thank you, Old Aviator. From what I can tell after reading these comments, sailors are awfully stuck up, pedantic snoots. It was a movie, and a pretty good one. Yes, there were unrealistic errors. Please find me a movie that doesn’t have them. I’m a former Air Force pilot and now a commercial airline pilot and part-time flight instructor. Does that prevent me from enjoying Top Gun or Flight? No, no it does not.

So “sailors are awfully stuck up, pedantic snoots?” I will not share my views of aviators.

I am not a sailor and the movie offended me the guy was a dumb ass he must have inherited the boat, he was to stupid to make that kind of money to buy it. Another thing he was so out of shape all he did was sleep wile his vote was sinking the movie sucked.

I should have worded that better. I was speaking in the context of these comments. But when the majority of those making comments express such a disgust at fictional errors that they are unable to watch a movie for what it is, then it makes them sound like insufferable bores. It wasn’t a how to film or a documentary. I’m a huge Star Trek fan (TNG, not the OS) and yet I’m still capable of enjoying it even though they regularly defy the laws of nature.

You obviously don’t get it. There are very few movies made about sailing. Lots of sailors, including myself, were looking forward to seeing the movie. It turned out to be virtually unwatchable. The number of needlessly stupid details was a huge distraction, not to mention making the story itself senseless. Clearly, the actors, director and producer did not know the first thing about sailing.

It would have been easy to hire someone who had a clue about sailing. When Ang Lee directed the movie, Life of Pi, much of which took place in a lifeboat, he hired Steven Callahan, who survived 76 days in a life raft. Even though Life of Pi is largely fantasy, Ang Lee wanted to get the details right. If J. C. Chandor had bothered to put an actual sailor on staff he might not have made such a stupid movie.

Wow I think I have to side with Young Aviator here. I’ve been sailing since I was a Sea Scout in the 60’s and have numerous open ocean experiences. Yeah I noticed all the problems everyone here mentioned, but who cares? I’m guessing a film of any of your adventures would be pretty boring since none of you make mistakes and are complete exemplars of safety and professionalism. It sounds more like you’re mad that the filmmakers didn’t personally call you to be technical advisors.

Well, that is a bizarre suggestion, though anybody who has spent more than a few hours offshore could do better than the director of this terribly made movie. This could have been a very good film if the directors and writers were not so dreadfully sloppy and careless.

I agree with all the glaring mistakes, but nevertheless, a very enjoyable movie…. It’s just a movie guys!!! But could someone explain to me the scene with the wTer jug? He kept spitting it out? Why? What was wrong with the water?

If my memory serves he failed to close the vent on the jug, letting salt water in.

I liked the movie even though I kept yelling at the screen stuff like “don’t tack to port dummy , you’re going to take on more water” and “put the freakin wash boards an and close the hatch before you ship another big comber” . I found it really absorbing and tense wonder what dumb thing he was going to do next. However , I find a lot of the “expert” sailor gripes above unfounded. Maybe he couldn’t start the engine because his engine cranking batts were shorted out. He had a lot of water in the boat. The lanyard on life rafts are specially made to break away before dragging the raft under. I think some of you experts need to lighten up some. Plus , I think he made it. The free dive record is really really deep.

I am not a sailor, and I really wanted to like this movie because of how beautifully it was shot but the obvious problems kept me from doing so. To those who are saying that the movie would be boring without conflict and problems, that is true to a point. But the problems have to be ones that people can relate to or at least not so far fetched that the observer stops caring. I know about emergency beacons in part because of a really interesting story I heard on public radio about a family that was open water sailing and ran into some problems with a young, ill child aboard. The boat was not in imminent danger of sinking but it was a dangerous situation. They had to decide whether to deploy the beacon, knowing it would mean the end of their home, because rescue would come for them but not the boat. That true story held more interest for me than this movie. The mistakes they made were understandable to me. I could put myself in their shoes and wonder what would I do? This movie held none of that, from the first moments where he woke up with water in his cabin and calmly and slowly went to check it out.

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All is Crap – The Movie

In a nutshell…..

In a flat-calm sea, a sailboat collides with the corner of a shipping container, punching a 3’ hole in the side above the water line

Captain is awakened not by the crash, but by the sound of sloshing water in the cabin

Captain saves a book from the nav station, and then goes on deck for a look. Tries to use a boat hook as a lever to free the boat from the container puncture without success.

Without PFD or line back to boat, jumps aboard container with his sea anchor. Smartly attaches sea anchor to container and deploys anchor, allowing current (?) to pull container away.

Trims sails and sails away on a starboard tack, thereby lifting starboard hull and hole up and away from the waterline.

Shortly thereafter puts boat on port tack, thereby allowing water to enter cabin.

Collides almost straight on with container. Lets the headsail flog. Jumps back on container, this time with line back to boat, and retrieves sea anchor. Returns to boat.

Has no problem hauling in sea anchor.

Lets water continue to fill cabin. Finally returns to cabin, water is mid-thigh high. Then he checks to see if he can run the bilge pumps but there is no power.

Attempts to wash salt-water logged radio with fresh water. Brings 12V battery on-deck, and connects to radio. Tries to establish a connection, but not successful

Next day cabin is still full of water.

While below, hears chatter on the radio left on deck. Goes to radio and makes this message;

“This is the Virginia Jean with a SOS call”

No response and he tries 2 more times.

Drinks booze

Gets rained on with radio left on deck

Next day drops main

Goes up mast in bosun’s chair, piece of cake with 3:1 advantaged blocks. Finds that radio PL59 connection is unconnected, hand tightens then uses crescent wrench to tighten. Sees a big cloud mass and storm in distance. Descends mast

Secures booze bottles first, then secures loose items and fills water jug. Shaves.

Returns to on-deck for evening spot a helm in gale. No PFD or clip-on used.

Returns to cabin to put on foulies

Opens sea hood and water runs in. Removes hatch boards and stows inside the cabin

Goes below and puts on harness (finally!). Removes hatch boards again and stores below. Returns to deck in strong gale. Sees that headsail has come undone. Clipped onto lifelines.

Is washed overboard and dragged alongside boat and underwater. Hauls sell on-board and recovers in less than 30 seconds

Attempts to set staysail and succeeds. Returns to cabin and replaces hatch boards.

Boat gets rolled 360 degrees. Stays upside down for 20 seconds. Everything falls. Miraculously the patch in the hull survives and no water comes in through open companionway.

Returns to deck, removes hatch boards and stows below. No PFD again. Attached line to stern pushpit rail and heaves overboard.

Boat rolled again, captain thrown overboard. Swims underwater and returns to cockpit just in time before boat rights itself. Visibility underwater is better than above the water

Climbs on deck to find rig is down – mast bent, boom in water.

Returns to cabin and put hatch boards back in. Holds head in anguish

Notices that patch is leaking now.

Loses balance and head whacks into mast – is knocked out

Wakes up to find that patch is leaking badly

Removes hatchboards again (still raining the whole time) and returns to cockpit, no PFD

Gets lifeboat ready, attaches painter to back rail, and deploys life raft overboard. It does not inflate at first, then opens. Seas are about 1-2 feet high in background

Gets in lifeboat. No evidence of ditch bag. Nighttime. Gets into lifeboat during nighttime storm and decides to sleep with lifeboat attached to yacht.

Awakes the next day – perfect weather, sunny, still attached to sailboat. Returns to boat and gets provisions, charts, water jug. Retrieves cardboard box. Tends to head wound by pouring peroxide on it and butterfly bandages, Boat about 2/3 under water.

Later watches sailboat sink in perfectly calm water.

Spends day in lifeboat. Tries to figure out sextant. Chart shows Indian Ocean. Latitude around 20 or 23 degrees

Sees another storm coming as night approaches.

Night time storm gets tossed about.

Tries water jug but it is contaminated with salt water.

Gets inspiration and figures out to make a solar still out of polyethylene jug. Throws jug plastic cut out overboard (could be used for something else). Covers cut open jug with plastic sheet. Weights down center of sheet to form drip top.

Fish being to congregate under lifeboat

Container ship passes, lights hand flare but ship does not see him.

Sharks start to congregate under life raft

Nighttime, sees another large ship pass, but they do not see him

Next day – More sextant and plotting

He writes farewell notes. Puts note in jar and tossed overboard.

Nighttime again

Sees lights of ship in distance

Lights flare, they do not see him, sets raft on fire, forced to abandon it while it burns brightly

Bobbing in water, starts to sink under burring ring of life raft, (solemn music plays).

Lights of ship approach burning raft

He decides to swim back up to surface toward the white light, a hand reaches out – the end!

We were actually considering watching this flick till we saw the laundry list of glaring discrepancies on this and other web sites, and we are not sailors: all we know is the pointed end is the bow. What happened to the days of a technical adviser; has the computer age dumbed down the masses that bad? Now you know how the average weapon buff, engineer or sportsman feels about hollywood limousine liberals making films w/silenced revolvers, uncharged pistols (like Squeaky Fromme) did 35+years for holding, and snipers twiddling w/scope knobs and caps while breaking their stance and chambering a round they had forgotten to load: where’s John Milius? Tnx.

Inside 'All is Lost' From a trio of Cal 39s to teaching Redford to sail

It's a safe bet that viewers have never seen a movie like the survival-at-sea film "All is Lost." That's because there's never been a movie like it.

Writer and director J.C. Chandor said sailors, especially, should like the movie. He should know: he is one.

Chandor, who was nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay for the 2011 film "Margin Call," which he also directed, grew up sailing at Sakonnet Yacht Club in Little Compton, Rhode Island, where he later worked as a sailing instructor, and traveled with his family to Lightning regattas. Although he doesn't have the opportunity to sail much anymore, he joins his parents sailing when possible.

"I've done one big bluewater sail before, but I have a broad base-level understanding of sailing and had a fascination with why people choose to go off and challenge themselves and sail around the world," Chandor said. "I knew what was possible and had sailed on a similar sized boat growing up so I knew what you could get away with and what would happen."

Chandor said he had been looking to do a film in the survival genre for some time, but it was no certainty that such an unusual film would see the light of day. The screenplay was a mere 30 pages long, about a quarter the length of a typical movie, leaving potential producers to ask for the rest of it, and the success of the movie depended on an actor who could carry the movie. Redford, a champion of independent filmmakers through his Sundance Film Festival, was drawn to the uniqueness of the script.

With Redford on board, Chandor still had the herculean task of filming a movie set entirely on water. Three 1978 Cal 39s were purchased in Southern California to depict Redford's character's boat Virginia Jean . One was used for open-ocean sailing, another for tight interior shots and a third for special effects. The boats, formerly known as Tahoe , Tenacious and Orion , receive a special mention in the movie's credits.

"Three boats sacrificed their lives to make the movie," Chandor said. "Two of them were in poor condition and one was in great condition, but we chopped them up in different ways for various scenes."

Chandor had a specific backstory in mind for both Virginia Jean and Redford's character. He imagined that the man bought the boat a couple decades earlier, letting its upkeep slip a little before investing about $20,000 in updating the boat before he set off on his solo sail.

"This is really a movie about a guy coming to grips with his mortality," he said. "My backstory was that this adventure was something he always wanted to do, but he probably waited a little too long to do it."

Camera crews, including specialists in filming on the water with movies such as "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "The Life of Pi" to their credit, filmed in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean, as well as in the world's largest filming tanks, constructed for the movie "Titanic."

Redford, who is not a sailor but has spent some time on powerboats, became an adept sailor for the movie, Chandor said.

"He had three weeks of filming in the portion of the movie when the boat is in trouble and he was a little off balance like anyone new to sailboats is, but it worked because the character is extremely off balance at that point because his boat is about to sink," Chandor said. "But after a few weeks of spending every day on the boat he started to really get the hang of it so when we were filming the great sailing shots in the Pacific in a big, beautiful 20-knot wind with big rollers, he was sailing the boat by himself."

Redford, who was 76 during filming, did most of his own stunts for the film and is being praised for the acting tour de force, with some Hollywood insiders predicting the film could win him his first acting Academy Award.

Chandor said he knows that sailors will be watching the film closely to make sure it feels authentic.

"You have to remember you're making a movie and it takes place over eight days," he said. "You obviously have to break a ton of filmmaking rules not to mention sailing rules. You have to care about it being accurate and as a result I feel like the audience will go with you, so long as you don't insult their intelligence. You're seeing a person deal with situations from the opening scene that no sailor wants to ever be dealing with. But he is human and he makes mistakes. As a human you can't plan for every eventuality."

Chandor said sailors will notice that Redford's character does a few things incorrectly, but attributes that to the character as well the limitations of movie making.

"There are a couple little things that aren't correct, like his EPIRB is not functioning. So he's an idiot. There are one or two things where I ask your forgiveness as a specialized audience, but compared to 'Wind' or other sailing movies I think sailors will be pleasantly surprised.

"We had a huge team of specialists and we tried not to make too many mistakes. But you have to remember, this guy is not a professional sailor. In a weird way, any of the mistakes we might make, he's allowed to make as a character. He's not supposed to be the most experienced sailor on Earth."

Chandor said the movie delves into a basic human fear of being stranded on the water, one sailors can relate to perhaps better than anyone else.

"The ocean can be the most inhospitable place on Earth," he said. "It can be so calm and life giving and at a moment's notice it can be the most inhospitable place on the planet."

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Movie Interviews

At 77, robert redford goes back to his roots.

In All Is Lost , Robert Redford plays an unnamed sailor, stranded at sea on a badly damaged yacht. Daniel Daza/Roadside Attractions/Lionsgate hide caption

Robert Redford isn't merely the star of the movie All Is Lost — he plays the only character. He plays a man stranded alone on a small yacht in the Indian Ocean, and New York Times film critic A.O. Scott says it's "the performance of a lifetime."

We don't know the man's name, why he's there, or anything about his background — but when disaster strikes, we learn that he's resourceful and doesn't succumb to panic. After a stray shipping container rams his vessel and leaves a gaping hole in the hull, he must make the boat seaworthy again in order to survive.

In the 1976 film of All the President's Men , Dustin Hoffman and Redford played the Washington Post reporters who uncovered the Watergate scandal . AP hide caption

In the 1976 film of All the President's Men , Dustin Hoffman and Redford played the Washington Post reporters who uncovered the Watergate scandal .

"I was very drawn to what was not said," Redford tells Fresh Air 's Terry Gross. The 30-page script for the nearly wordless film was made up mostly of sketches. And in a physically demanding role, Redford, 77, did nearly all his own stunts.

"I liked the idea there were no special effects," he says. "It was a very low-budget film, very independent in its spirit and its budget. ... It was more of a pure cinematic experience — the way films used to be, maybe even going back to silent films."

He says he was glad to get away from the high technology that has "infested the film business."

Redford was nominated for a Golden Globe Award on Thursday, and the New York Film Critics Circle has voted him best actor of the year. His best-known films include Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid , The Candidate, The Way We Were, The Sting, All the President's Men and Out of Africa .

He directed several films, including Ordinary People and Quiz Show , and he directed and starred in The Horse Whisperer and the recent film The Company You Keep.

Interview Highlights

On the simplicity and minimalism of All Is Lost

I did ask in the beginning, "Is there something I should know about this?" And the director [J.C. Chandor] evaded answering it. ... I liked the script ... because it was so exact. It was so detail-oriented, and it told me that there was a vision behind this film that was very secure. And that meant that I could put myself in his hands. ... It just felt right; it was an instinctive thing. Rather than all the folderol that goes on these days before somebody commits — you got agents, you got managers, you got financial people that are all busy analyzing the pluses and minuses of it — it was stripped of all that, and I loved it. The fact that I could step into a film and really get back to my roots where I originally started in the theater in New York and the end of live television.

Reviews Of 'All Is Lost'

Movie Reviews

At home at sea: robert redford, at his best alone.

In 'All Is Lost,' Plenty To Be Found

On filming the storm scenes

A lot of it [was shot] on the open water, but when we had to get into the really tough stuff we went into a giant tank where they have these big wave machines, these big cylinders that can cork up the waves to 6, 7 feet that will swamp the boat or maybe turn it over. You had rain, violent rain machines, then you had wind machines, and then you had crew members with fire hoses hitting you with water, heavy streams of water. So when all of those things are cooking at once, you're really in a storm. So I really did feel, while I was doing this, that I was actually in a storm. ... It became very physical. ... [When I was younger] I enjoyed doing my own stunts when I could, and I thought, "Well, at this point in my life, what can I still do? I'm not sure." So it was, in a way, a test.

On All Is Lost being an intimate journey with the audience

One of the things that was challenging was you had to be completely there as the actor. Because there was no filter, there were no barriers created by voice-overs ... there was the chance for the audience to come close to you as you were going through this. You had to be real in what you were going through. You had to be absolutely there.

That's also an attractive thing as an actor, to be completely occupied with your character on all levels. ... This gave the audience a chance to come closer to the character so that if it was going to work, then the audience could feel at a certain point like they were taking this journey with you.

Redford (right) directed and starred in The Horse Whisperer in 1998. He's pictured above with real-life horse whisperer Buck Brannaman. Getty Images hide caption

Redford (right) directed and starred in The Horse Whisperer in 1998. He's pictured above with real-life horse whisperer Buck Brannaman.

On discovering his love of exploration and nature

I went to college to get out of Los Angeles. I went to college because it was Colorado, and it was the mountains, and by that time I realized that nature was going to be a huge part of my life. Los Angeles, for me, when I was a little kid at the end of the Second World War, I loved it. It was full of green spaces. When the war ended ... suddenly Los Angeles, which had no land-use plan, it felt like the city was being pushed into the sea. ... Suddenly there were skyscrapers and freeways and smog, and I ... wanted out. So I went into the mountains, into the Sierras and worked at Yosemite National Park and fell in love with nature.

I was not a good student through my entire life. My mind was out the window. I drew underneath the desk. I drew pictures. I wasn't learning the way I was supposed to learn, and I think I realized that my education was going to happen when I got out in the world and engaged with other cultures, other places, other languages and had the adventure of exploration. And I felt, "That's my education."

On how his family dealt with loss

[I] come from a dark family [that] emigrated from Ireland and Scotland: Didn't talk much; you don't complain much; you don't ask for anything; you bear the brunt of whatever comes your way, and you do it with grace. So when my mom had twin girls that died [after birth], there was no talk about it.

When I was a little kid, I was very close to my uncle who was in the Second World War, and he was with Gen. [George] Patton's Third Army. He was an interpreter because he spoke four languages fluently. I was very fond of him, and he would, on his furlough, he'd come down to play baseball with me and so forth. And then he went away to war and was killed in the Battle of the Bulge. When he died, I was very close to him.

The way the family dealt with it — it just wasn't talked about. It just happened, and you didn't ask a lot of questions. It was what it was. I think that was sort of built into the family structure. ... There was no talk about it, and everybody moved on.

Redford says it has been "sort of weird" being known for his good looks. He's not unhappy about it but would rather the focus were on his acting. Hulton Archive/Getty Images hide caption

Redford says it has been "sort of weird" being known for his good looks. He's not unhappy about it but would rather the focus were on his acting.

On how he almost wasn't cast in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

When it first came up, because of the age difference between Paul [Newman] and I, which was like 12, 13 years, and he was really well-known and I was not well-known ... the studio did not want me ... and they tried everything to keep me out of the film. It was 20th Century Fox. I think it was Paul Newman and William Goldman, the writer, and George [Roy Hill, the director] that stood up for me against the studio. ... When I met Paul he was very generous, and he said, "I'll do it with Redford." I never forgot that. ... He and I, in the course of that film, became really, really good friends.

On being known for his looks

One of the things that has been sort of weird is to see yourself characterized so often as somebody that looks well, that has glamorous looks, or is appealing physically. That's nice, I'm not unhappy about that. But what I saw happening over time was that was [what was] getting attention.

I wanted to be good at my craft, and therefore I would be an actor that would play many different kinds of roles, which I did. I played killers, I played rapists, really deranged characters, but most people don't know about that, because that was in television. So suddenly you're seeing yourself in a glamour category and you're saying, "Wait a minute." The notion is that you're not so much of an actor, you're just somebody that looks well. That was always hard for me, because I always took pride in whatever role I was playing. I would be that character.

More With Robert Redford

Redford: Documentaries Show 'Where The Truth Is'

Redford: An Entertainer Who Looks To Inform

Redford's 'Conspirator' Begins As Lincoln's Life Ends

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Robert Redford is an eco-hypocrite, film claims

Hollywood a-listers love to trumpet their green credentials. guy adams reports on a film-maker who's out to expose them, article bookmarked.

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For years, they've preached green living while travelling the world in SUVs, limousines and private jets. But now Hollywood's foremost tree-huggers face the prospect of being exposed as eco-hypocrites – in the very medium that finances their extravagant carbon footprints in the first place.

Robert Redford became the latest movie star to have his environmental credentials publicly ridiculed on film this week, when a hostile documentary was released in which he stood accused of failing to practise the environmentalism that he so vehemently preaches.

The short film, Robert Redford: Hypocrite, was released on Friday, via YouTube, to coincide with the closing days of his Sundance Film Festival. Depending on your point of view, it represented either a cheap hatchet-job or a stunning evisceration of a pioneering green activist who was once lauded on Time Magazine's list of environmental "superheroes".

According to the film, Redford recently sold a dozen plots of land near to the Sundance ski resort in Utah, which he owns, to developers seeking to build luxury homes there. The revelation is especially contentious because each of the sites sits on an undeveloped ridge, in what was previously wilderness. Ironically, Redford recently stuck his head above the parapet to lobby against a similar project in California's Napa Valley, where he keeps a home. Mind you, the film points out, the nimby-ish actor did not stand to profit from the Napa development. The plots of land near Sundance, by contrast, fetched him around $2m each.

"It's the hypocrisy that gets me," said the film's Irish director, Phelim McAleer. "He's taking a lovely virgin ridge and building McMansions on it. Granted, they're nice, lefty, eco-McMansions. But they're McMansions all the same. At the same time, he's trying to stop other people from building houses in a nice spot." The film also points out that Redford, 74, has often called for the world to reduce its carbon footprint, while simultaneously accepting the shilling of United Airlines, for which he performed voiceovers in aTV advert proclaiming that "it's time to fly".

Yet the Sundance Kid won't be the last Hollywood liberal to face the howitzers of McAleer, who became a known figure among climate change deniers in 2009, when he released the controversial feature-length documentary Not Evil Just Wrong, which disputed global warming science.

In a previous short film finished two months ago, McAleer, ridiculed the environmental credentials of James Cameron. The Avatar director preaches "living with less", it noted, while owning a helicopter, a fleet of submarines, three Harley Davidsons, four sports cars and a private yacht.

Aerial footage of Cameron's Malibu estate in the film revealed several large houses, at least three heated swimming pools, a fire engine, but not one solar panel or wind turbine.

McAleer now has a "hit list" of other celebrities he regards as hypocritical. He intends to make and release a new film laying into one of them every two to three months. He also plans take aim at some US politicians.

"As a film-maker, this is the gift that keeps on giving," he says. "We have a hit list, and as well as the usual Hollywood suspects it has people like John McCain on it – a man who has backed climate-change legislation, while being unable to remember how many homes he owns."

Unlike many independent film-makers, who can find themselves in dire financial straits, McAleer says his short pictures are self-financing. On YouTube, they drive traffic to his website, where fans purchase DVDs of Not Evil Just Wrong. The Cameron film clocked up 175,000 "views".

"There seems to be something about the environmental movement that attracts hypocritical people," he added. "Most are rich, and while they don't want to give up what's made their life happy, they're happy to tell other people not to, say, drive an SUV. Making films that knock them is basically like shooting fish in a barrel."

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Wealth of Geeks

Seeing Red: The 25 Best Robert Redford Movies of All Time

Posted: March 2, 2024 | Last updated: March 2, 2024

After 2018’s The Old Man and the Gun , Robert Redford closed the book on a career that stretched across six decades across multiple genres. Redford leaves behind a remarkable legacy, with major contributions to everything from New Hollywood films of the ’70s to the indie revival of the ’90s to the superhero explosion of the 2010s. He’s served as star, director, producer, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival, contributing to great films in front of and behind the camera.

Redford’s extensive filmography can be a bit overwhelming to those who want to revisit his golden age. This list narrows down the 25 best Robert Redford movies, celebrating his work as a lead, a supporting actor, and a director.

1. War Hunt (1962)

Although Redford had already impressed audiences with his stage appearances and even had an uncredited appearance as a basketball player in Tall Story from 1960, his proper film debut came in War Hunt in 1962. A morally complex story about the end of the Korean War, War Hunt stars John Saxon as the secretive Private Endore, whose odd behavior helps the Americans but also threatens the Armistice. Redford’s idealistic Private Loomis must weigh the cost of reporting Endore or letting him continue his dubious activities.

2. Inside Daisy Clover (1965)

War Hunt received acclaim from audiences and critics. But the Robert Mulligan-directed Inside Daisy Clover made Robert Redford a name to remember, thanks to his Golden Globe-winning performance as a bisexual man who marries the titular character, played by Natalie Wood . Inside Daisy Clover flopped at the box office at the time and was drubbed by critics, but it has since grown to become a respected, if uneven, part of mid-60s cinema.

3. This Property is Condemned (1966)

A year after Inside Daisy Clover , Redford reteamed with Natalie Wood for this Tennessee Williams adaptation. As a railroad executive who falls for Wood’s wild teen, Redford shows early signs of the easy charm he’ll develop as his primary trait. But This Property is Condemned is tempered by his role as an utterly unlikable character who comes to destroy a small town for the sake of his bosses. At once alluring and repellent, Redford steals every scene he’s in.

4. Barefoot in the Park (1967)

Redford’s early work certainly had its love plots, but he didn’t become a romantic lead until Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park . As a conservative lawyer who marries a free-spirited woman, played by Jane Fonda , Redford gets to play the fuddy-duddy and foil. But even when he’s a stick-in-the-mud, Redford has enough charisma to make viewers side with him. This ability to attract and frustrate viewers will serve Redford well during his heyday in the 1970s.

5. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid , and not just for Redford’s career. Not only did the movie establish him as a bonafide movie star of the budding New Hollywood movement, alongside co-star Paul Newman, but it also provided a unique revision of the Western genre. The friendly banter between the two leads sets the mold for buddy movies for years to follow, all while giving audiences a unique take on the Old West. Even today, filmmakers still try to copy the easy allure that Redford and Newman bring to Butch and Sundance.

6. The Hot Rock (1972)

While he’s played more than a few criminals over the years, the strikingly handsome Redford seems an unlikely choice for a gritty crime movie. And yet, he’s one of the best parts of the Richard Westlake adaptation of The Hot Rock , directed by Peter Yates and written by William Goldman. As Westlake’s ne’er do well hero John Dortmunder, Redford has a nasty streak rarely found in his films, even as he perfectly embodies the character’s genius for cons and heists.

7. Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

These days, young people know Jeremiah Johnson for a short video of a bearded, burly Redford nodding with approval. They may not realize that Jeremiah Johnson is a captivating portrait of the titular mountain man. Against the revisionist edge of his Sundance Kid , Redford grounds Johnson with a world-weariness that reflects his character’s disgust with modern society. The movie’s treatment of Native peoples doesn’t hold up, but there’s no denying the power of Redford’s quiet performance.

8. The Candidate (1972)

Where Jeremiah Johnson played its traditional frontier story relatively straight, Redford indulged his counter-culture instincts for the satire The Candidate . The Academy-Award-winning screenplay by Jeremy Larner tells the story of a desperate political specialist (Peter Boyle) who enlists the idealistic young Bill McKay (Redford) to run an unwinnable campaign against a powerful Republican opponent. Redford’s natural good looks and likability make him a believable underdog politician, but former speech writer Larner undercuts what could be a feel-good story with a cynical edge.

9. The Sting (1973)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was a huge hit, making over $100 million in ticket sales and earning seven Oscar nominations. But when Redford rejoined with Newman and director George Roy Hill for The Sting , they experienced even greater success, scoring over $150 million at the box office and netting ten Oscar nominations, including Redford’s only Best Actor nod. With an irresistible heist plot and Redford and Newman at their best, it’s no surprise that The Sting won over fans and critics alike.

10. The Way We Were (1973)

For such a famously handsome actor, Redford did few openly romantic movies during his prime. Perhaps the closest he came to playing a romantic lead occurred in The Way We Were , opposite Barbara Streisand. As an apolitical writer entering Hollywood, Redford improves upon his Barefoot in the Park character, especially with Streisand’s performance as a political activist. Today, the main song has more prestige than the movie, but The Way We Were deserves a second look from Redford fans.

11. The Great Waldo Pepper (1975)

Although Newman didn’t join Redford for a third collaboration with George Roy Hill, The Great Waldo Pepper still stands alongside Butch Cassidy and The Sting as some of the actor’s best work. Unlike the rapscallion he played in his previous collaborations with Hill, Redford’s Waldo Pepper has a chip on his shoulder, feeling despair for missing out on World War I. The pilot’s attempts to recover lost glory cast a caustic look at post-war America.

12. Three Days of the Condor (1975)

In the mid-1970s, the counter-culture spirit of the ’60s turned into outright hostility against institutions, which filtered into Hollywood. Redford got in on the action with one of the decade’s best paranoid thrillers, Three Days of the Condor . As a CIA analyst forced on the run after barely escaping the destruction of his unit, Redford puts his disarming charisma to the test, forced to rely on strangers such as Faye Dunaway’s passerby to thwart the government officials looking for him.

13. All the President’s Men (1976)

Many of Redford’s movies turned a skeptical eye towards mainstream politics, none as effectively as 1976’s All the President’s Men . As Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward, alongside Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein, Redford portrays a key figure in a scandal that rocked the nation. Even though none of the movie’s four Academy Award wins went to Redford, All the President’s Men would have never happened without his work in front of or behind the camera.

14. A Bridge Too Far (1977)

Redford got his first big role in the movie War Hunt , but he didn’t return to the genre until the Richard Attenborough-directed A Bridge Too Far in 1977. An epic retelling of a failed Allied operation in the Netherlands, A Bridge Too Far boasts a script by William Goldman and an all-star ensemble cast, which includes James Caan, Sean Connery, and Michael Caine. Redford plays a relatively small part as Major Julian Cook, but he’s memorable as an American officer who clashes with his English counterparts.

15. Brubaker (1980)

Brubaker begins with Redford on familiar ground, playing a convict behind bars. But when the convict is revealed to be new Arkansas state prison warden Henry Brubaker, we realize that he’s combining his conman-type character with the social crusaders he’s played elsewhere. The story of an activist warden trying to reform a corrupt prison system, Brubaker puts Redford with some other great actors of the era, including Yaphet Kotto, Morgan Freeman, and M. Emmet Walsh.

16. Ordinary People (1980)

Ordinary People stars Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, and Elizabeth McGovern as the troubled Jarrett family. Robert Redford never appears in the film, which might make you wonder why it’s on this list. The answer is simple: Redford made his directorial debut with Ordinary People , which earned him his first Academy Award. A sad but deeply humane film, Ordinary People showcases Redford’s sensitivity as a filmmaker, which will be a defining part of his approach as a director.

17. The Natural (1984)

In the 1980s, America moved past the cynicism of the ’70s and embraced a more optimistic outlook, which was reflected in Redford’s work. Nowhere is that more apparent than in Barry Levinson’s adaptation of the Bernard Malamud novel The Natural . Screenwriters Roger Towne and Phil Dusenberry make major changes to the novel’s tone, but that gives Redford more room to work as a talented pitcher whose career never reaches the heights he expected.

18. Out of Africa (1985)

With a quarter-century’s worth of film credits to his name, Robert Redford was already a favorite in 1985. But Out of Africa cemented his reputation as a Hollywood legend. Directed by Sydney Pollack and written by Kurt Luedtke, Out of Africa starred Redford and Merryl Streep as big-game hunter Denys Finch Hatton and Danish Baroness Karen Blixen, who fall in love in Kenya. None of the movie’s 10 Academy Award nominations nor its seven wins went to Redford, but his participation helped the movie’s reputation.

19. Legal Eagles (1986)

It’s a bit of a surprise that Redford followed the Tony and Oscar winner Out of Africa with the comedy thriller Legal Eagles , but that just shows the actor’s underrated range. Alongside Debra Winger and Darryl Hannah, Redford stars as an assistant district attorney who gets caught up in a dispute between a performance artist and a powerful millionaire over ownership of a valuable painting. This screwball caper does get burdened by an overstuffed plot, but Redford keeps things as breezy as possible.

20. Sneakers (1992)

With the 60s well behind him, Redford no longer carried the same subversive reputation he once had. But he still had that rebellious streak, which was put to good use in the thriller Sneakers . As former activist Martin Bishop, Redford leads a team of thieves and hackers who get roped into a dangerous mission by a figure from his past. Redford’s chemistry with co-stars Sydney Pointier, Mary McDonnell, and Dan Ackroyd shines, even as director Phil Alden Robinson ratchets up the tension.

21. Indecent Proposal (1993)

It may have been one of the biggest hits of its year, but Indecent Proposal scandalized filmgoers of the early 90s. Provocative director Adrian Lyne casts Redford as a devilish millionaire who tempts a struggling couple, played by Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson, with an offer they cannot refuse. Screenwriter Amy Holden Jones keeps the sympathy clearly with the couple and against the rich man, but Redford’s natural appeal makes it hard to completely hate him.

22. All is Lost (2013)

As the founder of the Sundance Film Festival, Redford has always respected and supported independent cinema. So it makes sense that he would sign up for the ambitious project All is Lost , from director J.C. Chandor. Redford plays the only character in the movie, a sailor credited as “our man” who must marshal all of his courage to survive after getting lost at sea. With barely more than 50 words spoken in the movie, Redford gives a remarkably layered physical performance, one of the purest examples of his skills as an actor.

23. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

For some readers, the inclusion of a Marvel superhero movie on this list might seem like an insult to Redford’s career. After all, superhero movies are the exact opposite of the indie movies he champions. But there’s no denying the sheer chemistry the 77-year-old actor brought to Captain America: The Winter Soldier as corrupt politician Alexander Pierce. In a movie that included super-assassins and laser-welding flying aircraft characters, Redford’s smile remains the movie’s greatest effect.

24. Pete’s Dragon (2016)

Redford starred in a few breezy, colorful films in his day, but he never seemed like a good fit for Disney movies. But director David Lowery reimagines the minor Disney musical Pete’s Dragon as a grounded fairytale starring Bryce Dallas Howard as a forest ranger who finds a young boy (Oakes Fegley) who has befriended a giant green dragon. Redford adds gravitas as the father of Howard’s character, whose sense of wonder is restored when he recalls his relationship with the dragon.

25. The Old Man and the Gun (2018)

As this list shows, Redford played many different types of characters over his career. But he’s never better than when he’s a charming criminal. So it’s fitting that his final film, The Old Man and the Gun, gives him one last chance to break out the old wink and smile as an escaped bank robber who falls for a local woman (Sissy Spacek) while on the run. Reteaming with David Lowery and starring alongside Donald Glover and Tom Waits, Redford gets to go out on his own terms in a delightful performance that captures everything great about the legendary actor.

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