It’s here where the film enters into a far more relaxed pace and rhythm, where Zemeckis’ traditional long takes - which, during the film’s first half, are texturally crammed and almost frantically scurrying about - become less mobile and outright stationary as Chuck becomes accustomed to his new environment. Bird calls and insect buzzing have been all but removed from the audio mix instead, all we hear is the calming white noise of the crashing ocean waves. So much time, in fact, that the island itself becomes a zone of temporal destabilization, one where days begin to casually slip by into weeks, where months eventually turn into years. He takes what should be routine a job in Malaysia, where, instead, his plane crashes into the sea (with a heavily-strobed sequence that could be mistaken for a flicker film when removed from its original context) and he washes ashore onto a desert island located somewhere in the South Pacific. This all changes for Chuck rather quickly. During a Christmas meal with his extended family, Chuck remains beholden to his job and checks his pager non-stop. Chuck wears a wristwatch, carries a pocket watch with a photo of his girlfriend Kelly (Helen Hunt), and asks about the time at every turn yet, he never seems to have any for himself or his loved ones. This is why Chuck is so concerned with time, you see: it instills order within chaos - or at least tries to, even when things are still clearly in disarray. What may first appear to be a small goof ends up building into something greater, reverberating outward and affecting anyone in the wake of this blip. As systems analyst Chuck Noland (a pudgy Tom Hanks) points out, if one FedEx delivery truck is only a few minutes late, that tardiness will slow down the next delivery then, the next will be even more behind schedule, resulting in a series of small failures. This small, faceless interaction, condensed and streamlined, also serves as one of the many theses that run throughout Robert Zemeckis’ island-set epic: the ways in which fate and chance (in this case, the unpredictability of the natural world itself) guide and shape our lives, even down to the minute details. This simple yet global exchange of capital, as outlined, makes up roughly the first five minutes of Cast Away ’s 143-minute runtime. An inconspicuous FedEx parcel starts its journey on a desolate Texas dirt road, goes “snowbound,” and ends up in post-USSR Russia a few thousand miles away, placed in the capable hands of Mr.
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