Why Do I Keep Thinking About Cast Away?

Cast Away.  The movie with Tom Hanks about a guy who gets stranded on an island in the Pacific for 1000 days.  Wilson the ball.  FedEx product placement galore.  I saw this movie in a dollar theater with my wife and I enjoyed it just fine.  It runs on cable as a Saturday afternoon movie constantly.  I may have watched it once more all the way through.  It does not even enter my top 100 movies list.

But I think about it all the time.

I should say, the movie crosses my brain, or has done so, for the better part of two decades.  Something about the story stamped itself in my mind, and I have chewed on it in the car, on a lazy morning, or in the shower dozens of times.

I’m a sucker for a happy ending.  Sue me.  But Cast Away has a bittersweet ending, and when I first noticed my subconscious obsession with it, I thought that my brain wanted to rewrite the ending to something happier or more ‘Hollywood’.  That wasn’t it.  I love the ending just the way it is.  I’ve rewritten the Star Wars prequel trilogy in my mind, but this ending doesn’t need to change a thing.  It wasn’t the ending.  It wasn’t the casting, writing, or music.  I wasn’t drawn to the location.  I’m not a tropical beach guy and a life on a beach does not appeal to me at all. 

So, what is it? I’m actually trying to figure it out as I write all of this down.  I know I chew on this all the time and this is more of self-analysis than a movie review.

I know I wanted to see what happened next.  I realize that the movie was about getting Tom Hanks rail-thin and talking to a volleyball.  But the story of a man who lost everything in his life and returning is insanely interesting to me.  The ending could be the beginning of a TV show, or another movie. He is seemingly healthy and wiser and more knowledgeable about his life.  What next?  If your life was wiped clean and you had to start over, what would you do?  Would you fall over in a heap and lose your shit, or would you thrive?  The ending could seem ambiguous, but I just think it’s as realistic as they could imagine. 

Then we have Wilson.  In the character’s deepest expression of loneliness, he arranges a face on a volleyball and speaks aloud to it.  It serves a function in the movie, so we have some dialogue, but it’s also such a powerful relationship.  I talk aloud all the time.  All the time. It’s just thinking out loud…I haven’t painted a face on my coffee maker or anything.  I started doing it in college as a way to study and remember things for an exam.  Hearing it aloud was my way of getting it to stick.  But nowadays I talk aloud in the car during the day if I’m trying to sort things out.  Hanks’ character needed the same thing.  It was a proxy relationship that kept him sane and fed the parts of his mind that were starving for attention.  When the ball floated away during his exodus to find home, he wept and screamed that he was sorry.  That really hit me.  It was the part of his mind that kept him waking up every morning and, at that moment, it felt as if he was letting it die.  I’m not smart enough to pick that apart, but it was powerful.

I’d like to think I dwell on this movie because I believe I could survive.  If I lost everything, I’d be able to live.  I also feel as alone as he does on that island sometimes, and I have to remember that it is as much a fantasy as that volleyball having the ability to talk. Maybe the opportunity to drop out of society for a while is appealing to me?  That doesn’t seem right.  All of these could be reasons.  I could also look at Tom Hanks’ physical transformation for the part and feel jealous, and I want an excuse to lose a shitload of weight fast. 

I mean…maybe?