Cast Away
- Jun 7
- 2 min read
Updated: a few seconds ago
I love books and movies about people marooned on a deserted island. More than just a tale of adventure, storytellers often use the idea of being trapped on an island as a metaphor for what it means to be or feel alone in life, desperately hoping to escape that solitude and find a way to connect with the world.
For me, the movie Cast Away—made in 2000—is a terrific example of the island allegory at work. Tom Hanks gives a memorable performance as Chuck Noland—“no land”, get it—a FedEx employee whose job is to make sure that things run on time. Chuck is so obsessed with time, with meeting deadlines, that he makes no time for living his own life.
He doesn’t have time to propose to the woman he loves, played by actress Helen Hunt. He even doesn’t have time to see a dentist about a toothache that’s bothering him. But when the FedEx plane he’s on crashes in the middle of the ocean, and he’s washes ashore on a speck of an island, Chuck suddenly finds himself cut off, cast away, with all the time in the world. Except for a volleyball that washes ashore with him after the crash, and which he nicknames Wilson, Chuck is utterly alone and unable to escape.
Directed by Robert Zemeckis and beautifully written by William Broyles, the beauty of Cast Away is how it methodically strips away the layers of modern life that Chuck used to define himself. As the years pass, he’s forced to become a new man—literally. He changes from an overweight man once obsessed with controlling time…to a lean, muscular man whose only concern is to find enough food and water to stay alive, every day.
It’s a startling transformation. But Chuck’s fierce endurance to survive comes at a cost. With no hope of escape from his terrifying solitude, Chuck begins to contemplate the unthinkable—suicide.
It’s a lesson that ends up saving Chuck’s life.
But in that dark moment, something happens. Chuck experiences a profound realization that makes him stop from ending his life. He comes to the realization that the only time that really matters for him anymore is right now. “I knew in some deep part of me that I had to stay alive,” Chuck says, “even if I had no reason to hope. And that’s what I did. I just kept breathing.” It’s a lesson that ends up saving Chuck’s life when he’s given a miraculous chance to flee the island and rejoin the world, where the most important thing…the only thing…is to just keep breathing.
I give Cast Away four out of four stars. It’s a powerful adventure film with a spiritual heartbeat that speaks to the aloneness that grips all of us at one point or another in our lives, whatever island we may find ourselves trapped on.
Listen to the review
Originally broadcast for Silver Star Radio
