#17: ALL IS LOST - FILM'S SUBMISSIVE WHITE FLAG

There is a somewhat blaring, metaphorical insinuation present in the trailer (and title) of the upcoming film All is Lost.  Its a movie that features a lone-man performance by one of the remaining celluloid icons and festival forefathers, Robert Redford, alone and lost at sea with the very possible prospect that he may not make it in the end.

Cue the nervous, tear-welling laughter.

Here is the trailer:

While the film's literal plot seems terrifying and tragic, the allegorical undertones of what this trailer suggests about the actual state of the film industry, and the crippling nostalgia and negligence of it's medium, aggressively looms like an unavoidably swollen elephant that will not leave the room (and who likes to remind us that TV is winning).

This particular year, the current truth behind film's culturally-laureled studio system has been magnified and exposed by some of the industry's most favorable idols and sources, all reaching a point of saying that film, once thought to be an infinite and evolving road paved with an otherworldly brilliance and beauty, is actually careening towards a deadening precipice.  George Lucas used the word "tired" regarding the direction of the industry.  Steven Spielberg's choice words included "meltdown" and "implosion".  Gore Verbinski calmly remarked that the industry was on a "crazy road to extinction", just before the release of his faltering summer lemon, The Lone Ranger.  Matt Damon commented on how the overblown budgets of broad, simplified studio films have drained the "mid-level" film of its "complexity and nuance".  Steven Soderbergh has announced retirement, Quentin Tarantino has threatened retirement and Harvey Weinstein has begun to weigh his risks and options in terms of theatrical box office turnaround versus the secure success of televised distribution, making sure subversive, original films such as Soderbergh's Behind the Candelabra connects with the right audience.  

Bottom line: even the giants have turned cynical. 

However, our cynical giants are not saying that film is completely dead, but that it has surpassed irreparable corrosion.  Cinema's first imminent decline will be the disappearance of films like All is Lost, the character-driven, "mid-level" indie.  All is Lost (a title that makes me want to put on a black turtleneck and stare out of a seaside window with a forlorn expression a la Bibi Andersson) is a film that the studio systems are terrified of (did I mention the film has no dialogue nor any volleyballs for Redford to talk to).  There's too limited of a budget, too limited of a cast (sure its Robert Redford...but one guy in a boat without an analogous CGI tiger is a tough sell...) and too much dependency on character and story.  It's not just the independent film that has reached its peak but also the niche, story-driven film with a high yet modest budget (seven to eight figures, not the backbreaking nine), films that have been delivered by Redford (and through Redford's Sundance Film Festival), Soderbergh, Tarantino and Weinstein over the past three decades.  Even with the power of remaining "indie curators"-distributors Fox Searchlight, The Weinstein Company and Lionsgate (the distributor of All is Lost), there is the great possibility that these mid-level films will be quarantined by studios as a stagnant product, if not, a risk.  

Or...they'll just be passed on to cable TV...so, maybe not all is actually lost...completely.

-MTK