Directed By: Robert Zemeckis
Other Notable Films From Zemeckis: Back to the Future, Forrest Gump, Contact
Starring: Mother Nature, Tom Hanks’s beard, a photo of Helen Hunt in an antique pocket watch, a blood-stained volleyball
Screenplay By: William Broyles Jr.1
Movie Synopsis: A FedEx productivity expert gets stranded on a desert island after a cargo plane crashes into the Pacific Ocean.
Signature Line: “Wilson?! Wilson, where are you?! Wilson!”
THE INTRODUCTION
An accounting of time, and people, and context
Tom Hanks did not win an Oscar for his portrayal of Chuck Noland, the schedule-obsessed FedEx analyst who gets marooned on a remote island in Cast Away. He was nominated, of course—the fifth Best Actor nod of his career2—but he didn’t actually win. Which is why it was so funny when Hanks said this:
“I am constantly congratulated for winning Best Actor for Cast Away.”
He said that to Bill Simmons during an appearance on The Bill Simmons Podcast in 2021. The two had just spent a handful of minutes discussing Cast Away, and that's when Hanks, ever the charmer, joked about how people always assume he won the trophy that year.3 And, really, it’s an easy mistake. Many consider his performance in Cast Away to be the best of his career—a brilliant, nuanced examination of the irrepressibility of the human spirit.
Here’s the thing, though: I would argue that Hanks not winning Best Actor for Cast Away—thematically, anyway—is a much more fitting outcome. Because that's kind of the entire point of the movie, which he crystalizes in an absolutely perfect end-of-film monologue.
Four years after presumably dying in a plane crash, Chuck Noland arrives home to discover that the woman he was engaged to—the woman whose memory inspired him to stay alive on the island—has started a family with another man. Though the two former lovers clearly still care about each other, their unexpected reunion doesn’t lead to a rekindling of their relationship. Instead, they part with a shared understanding that the future they’d once imagined will never come to bear.
And so in the movie’s final moments, when Chuck tells a friend about the heartache he feels because he’s just lost out on the chance to build a life with Kelly for a second time, he compares it to a failed suicide attempt he had while on the island, except but with a surprising twist. He says that it wasn’t until after he’d given up and assumed his life to be over that the tide washed ashore the piece of debris that he’d eventually use as the sail on a makeshift raft that would help him make his way off the island.
Which is why it’s so beautiful when he ends the monologue with this:
“I’m so sad that I don’t have Kelly. But I’m so grateful that she was with me on that island. And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow, the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?”
THE VIEWING
A timestamped rewatch of Cast Away
1:46: Wow. Okay. What a start. For years, I thought the Cast Away title here was one word. Literal YEARS. Tom Hanks in Castaway. I would’ve bet anything on it. But nope. Two words. My brain is spaghetti right now. This is like when I found out that Hannibal Lecter never actually says “Hello, Clarice” in The Silence of the Lambs.
5:13: Tom Hanks is here. He plays Chuck Noland, a FedEx systems analyst who is extremely dedicated to his job. He’s giving a FIRE ‘EM UP pep talk right now to a team of Russian employees with the same sort of ferocity and vigor that Al Pacino had during his THE INCHES WE NEED ARE EVERYWHERE AROUND US speech at the end of Any Given Sunday. This man fucking LOVES making good time. He’s gonna make a wonderful dad someday. There's nothing dads loves more than making good time.
6:17: Chuck just gave a Snickers bar, portable CD player, and Elvis Presley CD to a kid as a reward for delivering a package. There's no way that kid is interested in Elvis, right? Like, this is all taking place right now in December of 1995. He probably wanted a Bone Thugs-N-Harmony album. Poor kid. First, Ivan Drago loses to Rocky on Christmas Day, and now this? No wonder Russia hates America.
7:35: A thing we learn about Chuck here: Back when he was working as a delivery driver, his truck broke down one day so he stole a kid’s bike to make sure someone’s package arrived on time. I think this is supposed to be an endearing trait for Chuck, but mainly it just makes me think that he’d be the type of co-worker to tell on you if you asked him to clock you in because you were running a few minutes late.
11:01: Helen Hunt’s here. She plays Kelly Frears, Chuck’s longtime girlfriend. I’ve always loved Helen Hunt as an actor. She has a warmth about her that’s very comforting. It makes everything she says feel meaningful, which is a great tool for an actor to have.
11:02: P.S. The comfort thing is a trait Tom Hanks possesses as well, which makes me wonder: Is the Chuck/Kelly pairing the most wholesome movie couple we’ve ever gotten? My gut instinct says yes. I bet they don’t even have sex. Like, if they wanted to have a kid, they’d probably just take turns sitting on a giant baby egg until it hatched.
11:03: P.P.S. Helen Hunt was so busy in 2000. In addition to Cast Away, she was also in What Women Want, Pay It Forward, and Dr. T & the Women.4 All together, her movies brought in nearly $900M(!!!) at the box office that year.5
15:27: Chuck and Kelly are at a holiday dinner with a bunch of other people. Everyone’s talking about FedEx-related stuff (like how many packages FedEx shipped the night prior6 versus how many packages FedEx shipped on their first day of business7). Do all these people work at FedEx? What’s going on here? This seems like a terrible dinner. I think I’d rather attend the dinner from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre than this one.
16:54: Chuck’s pager just went off. He’s being called back into work. Having a pager like you’re a heart surgeon when you’re a logistics efficiency guy is crazy.
18:20: Chuck and Kelly are exchanging Christmas gifts before he heads off on his work trip. Kelly gave Chuck an antique pocket watch that her grandfather carried with him while he was working on the Southern Pacific railroad.8 It’s a beautiful, meaningful, truly great gift. And do you know what he got her? He got her some fucking hand towels and a pager. It reminds of the time one year for Christmas where I bought Larami a skirt and a blouse that I thought she’d like, and then it turned out (a) she already owned the exact skirt and the exact blouse that I’d bought, and also (b) the new versions I’d bought were in completely the wrong the sizes. What a disaster that was.
20:18: Ohp. Never mind. He duped her. The pager and the hand towels were a gag gift. His real gift is a small jewelry box that has an engagement ring in that she’s not supposed to open until he gets back from his work trip. I should’ve known Tom Hanks wasn’t gonna be a shitty gift giver. Just two thoughtful and loving people being thoughtful and loving with one another. That little baby egg is gonna grow up in such a nice home.
21:08: Okay, here we go. Chuck’s on the plane. This crash he’s about to go through is one of (if not THE) most devastating plane crashes ever put to film. It’s completely calamitous, and completely chaotic, and completely catastrophic. The most horrifying parts of the scene:
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