All Is Lost (J.C. Chandor, 2013)

We come across an old man, Robert Redford, stranded in the middle of the Indian Ocean writing his final words to his family. Then there is a rewind to eight days earlier, showing how he got to be there when a sequence of calamitous events began with his yacht being holed by a drifting cargo container. At no point do we learn his name, see another person or get any more actual dialogue apart from his cries and mutterings as hope drains away. Instead, we watch Redford wading in and out of water trying to overcome the increasingly desperate situation.
It's even more hard going than most survival stories with their false dawns because there is nothing inflatedly dramatic, and no change of scenery. The character makes mistakes, learns from them and still fails repeatedly, though not necessarily through any fault of his own. Gigantic cargo ships thunder by oblivious to him and in effect, now largely unmanned through technology, become impassive forces of nature as much as the storms that buffet him. It's too simple a structure to really hit filmic greatness, but as honest story-telling it deserves full respect.

7/10