Cast Away

Cast Away
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Robert Zemeckis
Written by	William Broyles Jr.
Produced by	Steve Starkey Tom Hanks Robert Zemeckis Jack Rapke
Starring	Tom Hanks Helen Hunt Nick Searcy
Cinematography	Don Burgess
Edited by	Arthur Schmidt
Music by	Alan Silvestri
Production companies	20th Century Fox DreamWorks Pictures ImageMovers Playtone
Distributed by	20th Century Fox (North America) DreamWorks Pictures (International)
Release date	December 22, 2000
Running time	144 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$90 million[1]
Box office	$429.6 million[1]

Cast Away is a 2000 American survival drama film directed and produced by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, and Nick Searcy. Hanks plays a FedEx troubleshooter who is stranded on an uninhabited island after his plane crashes in the South Pacific, and the plot focuses on his desperate attempts to survive and return home. Initial filming took place from January to March 1999 before resuming in April 2000 and concluding in May.

Cast Away was released on December 22, 2000, by 20th Century Fox in North America and DreamWorks Pictures in its international markets. It grossed $429 million worldwide, making it the third-highest-grossing film of 2000. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised its screenplay and Hanks' performance, for which he won Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama at the 58th Golden Globe Awards and was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role at the 73rd Academy Awards.^[2]

Plot[edit]

In December 1995, Chuck Noland is a FedEx systems analyst who travels the world resolving productivity problems. He lives with his girlfriend, Kelly Frears in Memphis, Tennessee. The two talk of getting married but keep experiencing setbacks due to Chuck being constantly called away to work, which also starts to put a strain on their relationship. During a Christmas dinner, Chuck is summoned to resolve a problem in Malaysia.

Before leaving, Kelly gives Chuck her grandfather's pocket watch with a photo of her in it. He gives her a small box, saying she can wait to open it on New Year's Eve when he returns, implying it is an engagement ring.

However, the FedEx cargo plane Chuck is on gets caught in a violent storm, loses control and crashes into the Pacific Ocean. He is the only survivor and escapes on an inflatable life raft, losing the emergency locator transmitter in the process. The next day, he washes up on an uninhabited island.

As FedEx packages begin to wash ashore, Chuck gathers and sorts them but leaves them unopened. The body of one of the pilots, Albert Miller, washes up on the coast; he buries him and writes an epitaph on the rock above the burial site.

In the following days, Chuck struggles to locate food and water. After seeing the lights of a passing ship in the distance, he tries to escape in the life raft, but the strong tide tosses him onto a coral reef which pierces and badly cuts Chuck's leg.

Realizing it is unlikely he will be rescued, Chuck opens most of the packages, finding useful items he uses to improve his living conditions. However, he does not open a package with pink angel wings painted on it.

While attempting to start a fire, Chuck cuts his hand and furiously throws several objects including a Wilson volleyball, leaving a bloodstained handprint. After calming himself down, he draws a face into the blood, names the ball "Wilson" and begins talking to it.

Chuck realizes that the chances of ever being found are extremely low as the search area is equal to twice the size of Texas. After enduring a constant toothache, he is forced to extract his own tooth using a rock and an ice skate from one of the packages.

Four years later, Chuck, now bearded and disheveled, has adapted to life alone on the island. After a section from a portable toilet enclosure washes up on the island, he begins construction on a raft, using the plastic as a sail. While making a rope from tree fibers, aided by the enclosure sail, which he has painted with golden angel wings, Chuck launches a raft stocked with his belongings, as well as the unopened package. The sail helps the raft clear the surf, and allows Chuck to finally escape the island.

Chuck survives a storm, but afterward, Wilson falls off the raft and floats away. He unsuccessfully attempts to rescue Wilson and is left to grieve his loss. Soon after, he is rescued by a passing cargo ship.

Four weeks later, Chuck is cleaned up and returned to the mainland, where he learns he was declared dead by his family and friends. He is given a hero's welcome home party at the FedEx Headquarters in Memphis, where he learns that Kelly has since married and has a daughter.

One night, Chuck visits Kelly, where they bond for the last time; the two share a passionate kiss and confess their love for each other, but they both realize she cannot leave her family, and they part ways, with Chuck returning the watch Kelly gave him.

Chuck drives to Texas to return the angel-winged package to its sender. Finding no one home, he leaves it at the door with a note saying the package saved his life. He departs in his vehicle and stops at a remote crossroads. A woman named Bettina Peterson in a pickup truck stops and gives information about where each road leads. As she drives away, Chuck notices the two angel wings painted on the tailgate of her truck. He looks down each road, trying to decide which way to go, before he notices the wind is blowing back down the road where Bettina drove off to and turns back to her direction with a smile.

Cast[edit]

Production[edit]

Development[edit]

In a 2017 Actor Roundtable with The Hollywood Reporter, Tom Hanks stated^[3]

I made Cast Away because I wanted to examine the concept of four years of hopelessness, in which you have none of the requirements for living—food, water, shelter, fire and company. But it took us six years to put together the alliance that would actually examine that. I only had a third of it, and Bill Broyles only had a third of it, until Bob Zemeckis comes along and provided that other third. I had that original idea. I was reading an article about FedEx, and I realized that 747s filled with packages fly across the Pacific three times a day. And I just thought, "What happens if that goes down?"

— Tom Hanks in 2017^[3]

Filming[edit]

The film was not shot chronologically. It began on January 18, 1999, before halting two months later. Filming resumed on April 3, 2000, and finished the following month. Hanks gained 50 pounds (23 kg) during pre-production, for the purpose of making his transformation more dramatic. After most of the film was shot, production was paused so he could lose the weight and grow his hair and beard to look like he had been living on the island for years. Another four-month production halt preceded the filming of the return scenes. During the year-long hiatus, Zemeckis used the same film crew to make another film, What Lies Beneath.^[2][4] While the film was in production, Hanks nearly died when he suffered an infected cut on his leg. He was rushed to a local hospital to undergo surgery and stayed there for three days. Filming of Cast Away was suspended for three weeks to allow Hanks to recover from the injury.^[5]

Cast Away was filmed on Monuriki, one of the Mamanuca Islands in Fiji.^[6] It is in a subgroup of the Mamanuca archipelago, which is sited off the coast of Viti Levu, Fiji's largest island. The island became a tourist attraction after the film's release. After Chuck's return, it is identified by Kelly as being "about 600 miles [970 km] south of the Cook Islands," but there is no land between the southernmost Cook Islands of Mangaia and Antarctica.

The film begins and ends in the same location, on the Arrington Ranch in the Texas Panhandle south of the city of Canadian, Texas.^[7]

Music[edit]

The film's minimal score was composed and conducted by Alan Silvestri for which he won a Grammy Award in 2002. The film's soundtrack is most notable for its lack of score and creature sound effects (such as bird song or insect sounds) while Chuck is on the island, which is intended to reinforce the feeling of isolation.^[8] Cast Away contains no original musical score until Chuck escapes the island. However, there is a Russian choral piece heard near the start of the film that was not composed or even recorded by Silvestri, so it does not appear on the film's soundtrack list. It is a traditional Russian song written by Lev Knipper called "Oh, My Field" ("Polyushko, Polye") and it is available on various collections of Red Army hymns.

The official soundtrack CD is an anthology of musical pieces from all the films up to that point that were both directed by Zemeckis and scored by Silvestri. The only track from Cast Away itself is the theme from the end credits.^[9]

The Cast Away soundtrack consists of 10 tracks, with performers including Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and Charles Brown.^[10]