Cast Away is a 2000 American survival drama film directed and co-produced by Robert Zemeckis, written by William Broyles Jr. and starring Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, and Nick Searcy. Hanks plays a FedEx troubleshooter who is stranded on a deserted island after his plane crashes in the South Pacific, and the plot focuses on his desperate attempts to survive and return home. Filming took place from January to March 1999, and April to May 2000.
Cast Away was released on December 22, 2000, by 20th Century Fox in the United States and Canada and by DreamWorks Pictures through United International Pictures in other territories. It grossed $429.6 million worldwide, making it the third-highest-grossing film of 2000. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised the screenplay and Hanks's performance. Hanks 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.
Plot
In December 1995, a FedEx courier collects a package from a sculptor, whose gate carries the names "Dick & Bettina". The package, marked with pink angel wings, is delivered to her husband, who is in Moscow with another woman.
Meanwhile, Chuck Noland is a FedEx systems analyst who travels the world resolving productivity problems. He lives with his girlfriend Kelly Frears in Memphis, Tennessee. They talk of getting married but experience setbacks because Chuck is constantly called away to work, straining their relationship. During a Christmas dinner, Chuck experiences a recurring toothache just before he is summoned to resolve a FedEx problem in Malaysia. Before Chuck leaves, Kelly gives him 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 that it is an engagement ring.
The FedEx cargo plane Chuck boards is off-course and out of radio contact due to a severe storm, and it crashes into the Pacific Ocean, leaving Chuck as the only survivor. He deploys an inflatable liferaft during the crash, but the attached survival kit rips free and is lost. After Chuck washes ashore on a deserted island, he discovers several FedEx packages washing up on shore as well, and eventually the body of one of the pilots, Albert Miller, which he buries. In the following days, Chuck struggles to locate food and water. After seeing a ship far away on the horizon, he tries to escape the island on the inflatable raft but is pushed back by waves, during which his leg is badly injured on a reef and the raft is irreparably punctured.
Realizing that it is unlikely he will be rescued, Chuck opens most of the FedEx packages, finding items he uses to improve his living conditions. However, he does not open a package with golden wings painted on it, thinking the wings have symbolic meaning. While attempting to start a fire, Chuck cuts his hand and furiously throws several objects including a Wilson volleyball, leaving a bloody handprint on the ball. He draws a face in the blood, names the ball Wilson, and adopts it as a surrogate companion. Chuck gradually acquires survival skills, including firestarting, spearfishing, and opening coconuts, but he realizes the chances of his rescue are low because the plane was so far off course when it went down. Chuck contemplates suicide. Because of the severe toothache, he performs his own extraction using a rock and the blade of an ice skate.
Four years later, Chuck, now bearded and disheveled, has adapted to life alone on the island. After a plastic section of a portable toilet enclosure washes up, he begins constructing a raft. He waits for the prevailing wind to make its annual shift to a favorable direction, then uses the panels as a makeshift sail to boost him through the surf, escaping the island with Wilson and the unopened FedEx package secured to the raft. A strong storm destroys the sail and severely damages the raft, and Wilson is dislodged and floats away. Devastated, Chuck loses all hope, discarding his oars and surrendering to fate. A passing container ship rescues a semi-conscious Chuck on the remnants of the raft.
After four weeks, Chuck returns to the United States, where he was presumed dead. As he is given a hero's welcome at the FedEx headquarters in Memphis, he is met by his endodontist, and now Kelly's husband, Dr. Jerry Lovett, who says Kelly is emotionally unable to greet him. Later that night, he visits Kelly and discovers she has a daughter. Chuck returns the pocket watch so it can remain as an heirloom within Kelly's family. Kelly shows him that she has kept his Jeep Cherokee, and gives it back to him. They share a passionate kiss and confess their love for each other. For a brief moment, it seems Kelly might drive off with Chuck, but then they both realize she cannot leave her family, and she goes back into her house.
Later, Chuck tells his friend Stan that he will miss Kelly, but his experience has taught him that he must move on. Chuck drives to Texas to return the angel-winged package to the address of the sender: the sculptor's home, where the gate now reads only "Bettina". A sculpture of golden wings stands in the yard. Finding no one home, Chuck leaves the package at the door with a note saying that it saved his life. He drives away and stops at a crossroads. The sculptor, in a pickup truck, stops and tells him where each road leads. As she drives off, Chuck notices the same angel wings painted on the tailgate of her truck. He looks down each road and smiles as he faces the road taken by her truck.
Cast
Production Development Cast Away marked the second collaboration between Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks, following Forrest Gump in 1994. In January 1999, Helen Hunt, who had previously worked on Twister and As Good as It Gets, was hired to play the role of Kelly Frears in the film.
In a 2017 Actor Roundtable with The Hollywood Reporter, Tom Hanks stated
Filming
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 during pre-production to make his physical 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. 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. Filming lasted for sixteen months.
Cast Away was filmed on Monuriki, one of the Mamanuca Islands in Fiji. 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 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.
Music 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.Cast Away DVD director's commentary 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 directed by Zemeckis and scored by Silvestri. The only track from Cast Away itself is the theme from the end credits. The album was released in 2001 by soundtrack specialty label Varèse Sarabande, rather than by Fox Music or DreamWorks Records, which were the in-house labels of 20th Century Fox and DreamWorks Pictures.
The soundtrack featured in Cast Away consists of 10 tracks, with performers including Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and Charles Brown.
FedEx FedEx provided access to their facilities (Memphis, Los Angeles, and Moscow) as well as airplanes, trucks, uniforms, and logistical support. A team of FedEx marketers oversaw production through more than two years of filming. FedEx CEO Fred Smith made an appearance as himself for the scene where Chuck is welcomed back, which was filmed on location at FedEx's home facilities in Memphis, Tennessee. The idea of a story based on a FedEx plane crashing gave the company "a heart attack at first", but the overall story was seen as positive. FedEx, which paid no money for product placement in the film, saw an increase in brand awareness in Asia and Europe following the film's release.
Wilson the volleyball
In the film, Wilson the volleyball serves as Chuck Noland's personified friend and only companion during the four years that Noland spends alone on a deserted island. Named after the volleyball's manufacturer, Wilson Sporting Goods, the character was created by screenwriter William Broyles Jr. While researching for the film, he consulted with professional survival experts, and then chose to deliberately strand himself for one week on an isolated beach in the Gulf of California, to force himself to search for water and food, and obtain his own shelter. During this time, a Wilson-branded soccer ball washed up on shore, providing the inspiration for the film's inanimate companion. When the idea was presented to Tom Hanks, he happily agreed on the volleyball as a memento to his wife, Rita Wilson, knowing he would be away from home for a long period for filming. From a screenwriting point of view, Wilson also serves to realistically allow dialogue to take place in a solitary scenario.
It is rumored, but not true, that one of the original volleyball props was sold at an auction for $18,500 to the ex-CEO of FedEx Office, Ken May. At the time of the film's release, Wilson launched its own joint promotion centered on its products "co-starring" with Tom Hanks. Wilson manufactured a volleyball with a reproduction of the bloodied handprint face on one side. It was sold for a limited time during the film's initial release and continues to be offered on the company's website. An original Wilson the volleyball prop sold via Heritage Auctions on December 7, 2024, for $162,500.
Release Theatrical Cast Away was released theatrically in North America by 20th Century Fox on December 22, 2000, the same day as Nicolas Cage's The Family Man, Sandra Bullock's Miss Congeniality, Gerard Butler's Dracula 2000, William H. Macy's State and Main, Cate Blanchett's The Gift, George Clooney's O Brother Where Art Thou?, and Javier Bardem's Before Night Falls.
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