PLANS: A Movie Review

A movie review of the movie Cast Away

Some things are cannot be planned.

The film Cast Away is a two-hour movie that shows a simple story but gives a powerful lesson that most of us, humans, tend to forget. This movie gives us a story of an organized and systematic man’s survival in an isolated island due to a plane crash. Despite of his organized and systematic plans in his everyday life, he still got into a situation that he, in his wildest dreams, didn’t expected. It is a movie that will show us the real natures of life, uncertainty and struggle.

Chuck Noland is the main character of the film Cast Away. He is a man of time because he is a worker of FedEx, a famous shipping company, and that is the very reason why he is so organized and systematic in all things that he does. “Workaholic” may be the perfect word for him and he tends to be on-time at all times. He is also the one who had a plane crash and got isolated in an island. In the story, Chuck was highlighted as a man who had so much struggles and pains for four years of being stranded, and he managed to survive through his inspiration, the love of his life, Kelly. Kelly Frears, she is one of the minor characters and she is Chuck’s girlfriend. However, because of the perception that Chuck is dead due to a plane crash, she managed to get married to another guy in the name of Jerry. When Chuck got home, she got a big-time confusion but in the end, Chuck made her choose Jerry for they already have their own family. Jerry Lovett, he is the guy that Kelly married. He is a man of lies because in the latter part of the story, he told Chuck that Kelly didn’t made it to the event even though she really made it there. Wilson, he is Chuck’s best friend in the isolated island. Chuck always talks to him to present his ideas but Wilson just shuts his mouth. Why? Because he is just a volleyball. He is only an imaginary friend of Chuck in the form of a ball. An island is the highlighted setting of the story because this is the place where Chuck got stranded. This island symbolizes Chuck’s hopelessness, sadness, and isolation, and this setting properly executed its role in the story because in the movie Cast Away, its appearance really says to the viewers that, “I am an isolated place.” In terms of the lights, it was almost perfect. “Almost” because there are parts where I, as a viewer, got a hard time in identifying what is happening, especially on the part wherein the plane crashed and Chuck got hit by huge waves. It really stressed out my eyes in perceiving the scene. Robert Zemeckis, he is the great director of this great movie. I am so pleased to his work of bringing this story, Cast Away, to life. He is a great director indeed because of his exceptional talent in using the setting as a powerful tool of disseminating message into the viewers. A nice movie always have an amazing father, and Robert Zemeckis is the amazing father I am pertaining to.

There is nothing wrong in setting plans because I myself is a fan of setting plans in each and every task that I do. However, this movie made me realized that preparation is still the best thing to do. Plans are there as a guide for an action but sometimes, or maybe most of the times, plans will not go the way it should be, that’s why we need preparations, lots and lots of it. So that when the times come that unplanned situations arose, we can still act in the best way possible. Through this film Cast Away, I learned that making plans is not a bad thing, too much dependence to those makes planning undesirable.