On Too Much Talking with All is Lost

We take it for granted, that in cinema we’ll be told what is going on and more and more, that we’ll be told what to think; who is good, who is bad, what they are thinking? But these are not the origins of audio visual storytelling. The earliest silent films were accompanied by live orchestral or piano music. Audiences had no problems interpreting these narratives and they have no problem now, they just might not know it. After all, a single photograph tells a story and if it isn’t anchored by a headline, we all bring different readings to it.

All is Lost, while much more involved than a single image and even more than a silent film is as good as silent cinema by today’s standards. One character, less than a page of dialogue and two settings (yacht and raft) ensure All is Lost is sparse cinema. But it is also powerful cinema and its timing is prescient in so much as it is like Gravity (2013) at sea and reinforces the power of beautiful images to tell stories. These films tell us (and All is Lost much more so) that we don’t need the heavy handed exposition dialogue that panders to audiences’ laziness and need to be walked through a narrative with their hand held. The lack of dialogue, yet the clarity of the narrative do make us question how much dialogue is really needed.  

We know nothing of Robert Redford’s man in All is Lost (not even his name), but we can piece it together and find a relatable character through images and music alone.  And what is refreshing is that the lack of anchorage makes All is Lost a far more open piece of cinema as there is much more scope for audiences to reach individual interpretations of the film, a film which may at first appear to lack all meaning.