The Lone Survivor Be

Image by Courtney Nicholas

What’s wit dem moovies that be wit them one person survivin’ in isolation? There be a slew of dem now, the one—at least dem contemporary one that stands out—be Tommy Hanks’s Castaway. It be about him on dem island wit Wilson, his ball, that take on dem personalities of a human, and we actually take Wilson to be a character, to the point we be actually sad when Wilson die—even tho muthafucka don’t even die, because he a fuckin’ volleyball!

It be like what dat dude, Scott McCloud say in How Comics Work, that we as humans put our likeness on any ol’ thing: clouds, flowers, animals, rocks, stick figures… volleyballs! Just find some eyes or a mouf and that shit has a human personality. But in that film Hanks had a whole island, that be the infinite space of Hamlet’s walnut shell compared to what the later muthafucks be puttin’ up wit: 127 Hours (muthafuck be stuck in a canyon,hand stuck in a rock! Makes Hanks’s island start lookin’ huuuge); some film with Ryan Reynolds in a trunk or sumptin, talkin’ on a cell phone (didn’t see it); Life of Pi (stuck in a raft, yeah dey waz a tiga, but he was probably imaginary—we gonna talk ’bout dat one later); Gravity (bitch be alone, big spectac backdrop—fuckin’ spaaaaace—but still alone as a ghos’); an’ now that Redford piece, All Is Lost (back in dat boat, wit no backstory! Mo’ bout dat later, too).

The lone survivor be a particular thing, it turn a film into a particular kind of storytelling that take it away from the usual interactions between characters, it take away most of what is callen di­-alogue, meanin’ two or mo’ mofos an’ it force the storytellin’ to be much about action, tha behaveya be the thang here. Unless it go into monologue, or like dem Shakespearian asides, but mos’ of dese films don’ so that, they come up wit a device (not in dem Redford one, no talkin’ ’cept for an’ openin’ sally that we’d call an’ interior monologue) in order to get them thoughts said out loud: Wilson, the ball; the camera in 127; the tiger in Pi; the apparition of Clooney in Gravity. Lez explore dese lone survivor tales for a minute to see sum of deys aspects.

An’ to be clear, this be nugin’ about dem performances, they all great performances by dem actors, if I do say myself.

First things first wit the movies I was just talkin’ ’bout, the person gotta be trapped. We need to see how she get there: plane crash; hiking accident; boat gets fugged; the Russians blow up a satellite, the debris fucks up a spacecraft, etc. Now she in a new situation, she got to adjust, we need to see dem tools that she has to work with, set them up, an’ now we got to see how she goin’ to eat and drink. This eatin’ and drinkin’ goin’ to play a big part of dem dramas, so dem filmmakers got to decide how dey goin’ to deal wif that shit. Danny Boyle already had Franco drink dat piss, an’ in a big way, so mos’ dese films, unless it be a spoof ain’ goin’ to go dere, it been done.

The action of survivin’ is what becomes the drama of dese films. There be two parts of survivin’: the outer part, or the physical part; and the inner part—the sanity, the memories.

Now, how dey goin’ to shoot that shit, that internal struggle? You’ll see that a bunch of dem use dem jump cuts because dey don’t have another actor to cut to, the editor jus’ be cutting back to differen’ angles of youse one actor; you need dat action to stay fresh, sos youse cut around the slow parts and jus’ cut to them meaty parts: you see this much in 127 Hours and All Is Lost mainly becuz dese two mostly take place in confined spaces. Tings like dem Castaway and Gravity use more fluid shit because they have bigger spaces to work in, an’ the whole reason to make Gravity was to show fluid shots in space, that be the primary shit in that film. (I mean it was all created in the computer, right? The actors’ faces put on the little astronaut bodies later? It be like an awesome animated film for adults—the big boys animation. Probably the ways filmz is goin’, eh? Well, maybe some films.) An in Pi, there was alwayz the tiger to cut to, so it wazn’t really a single character film because they dealt with that shit through fantasy.

So, now that you got yo’ character alone, do you pull the narrative out of the trapped space or do you keep him locked in dere? This is where fantasy, or the imagination of the character step in. In 127 Hours,Danny Boyle wanted to keep the action in the canyon, he didn’t use any of the character’s backstory before he be trapped or any of the rescue mission that be happenin’ without him. But Danny did use the character’s memories and his fantasies about water and escapin’ and seein’ his girl in order to escape from the canyon a little bit—but the trick he did was you never see the character in these fantasies, only pieces of him, so he never truly escapes the canyon till the end. Traps the audience in dere wif him.

Pi be one where the fantasy fully takes over an’ it is part of the main narrative so that we only learn it was illusion afta the fact. Gravity use dem ol’ trick of makin’ you think charmin’ Clooney be still alive so that you can have one mo’ scene wif him to lighten and tighten tings up, so youse get the effect of Clooney’s charm while still getting the counter effect ov the poignancy of his sacrifice and death. In All Is Lost, there be no fantasy. It all action. All you get is a little interior monologue shit up front to let you know the man have feelings.

So, who dey gonna talk to? Redford don’t talk, he just say “fuck” at his lowest moment; Sandra Bullock talk to the fake Clooney an’ to herself, and to a goofy Chinese guy on the radio; the Pi dude talk to dem tiger; Hanks talk to Wilson; and Franco talk to the camera. They all devices to get them inner voices out to the surface. They need dem devices because these movies presentin’ themselves as, mo’ o’ less, realistic, so the devices allow for info that usually come in a theatrical device like dem asides Shakespeare did, but it be done wit’out breakin’ the fourth wall of dem diegetic worlds.

When you see Gravity, you blown away by the depiction of space; you see Castaway an’ All Is Lost because you see dem icons, Hanks and Redford goin’ through tough physical shit; you see Pi for dem amazingly real effects wit dat tiger; in 127 e’rybody kno’ that the arm is gonna come off befo’ they go in the theater, so, as soon as mu’fucka gets trapped by the rock, it like the audience is trapped, too, anticipatin’ that shit comin’ off, it ratchet up the tension like a mutha. In All Is Lost they make it seem like he gonna die with the interior monologue at the beginin’ an’ the title to add to the tension in the same way.

Now, here be the big thing: the climax. Now, I know I be biased becuz sum people might say I’m too close to one of dem filmz, but I not talkin’ about the performances, I’m juz talkin’ ’bout the structure of dem filmz. All the characters hit a low moment befo’ they saved—an’ don’t be fooled, they all gonna be saved. No investor gonna let sumone do this kinda film an’ make the audience go through that shit and then kill the muthafucka, yeah you can kill a side character, even sumone as big as Clooney, but you can’t kill dat main character—but only one of dese films makes the audience go through something really hard: 127. It’s dat damn arm. Cuttin’ that shit in such an intense way was what made sum mothas pass out in the theater and made many fools stay away, but it’s tha thing that gave that movie the extra power. You make the audience go through that shit, and it’s a fucking catharsis for all, not just the character. An’ by that point you with him, you want him to cut it, you identify, so it be intense as fuck.

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