Director: J. C. Chandor
Writers: J. C. Chandor
Star Rating: 4.4
Early Action / Background
The hero of the story is nameless, and the director refers
to him as ‘Our Man’. His implied earlier life as perhaps a difficult husband,
father, or friend, or all three, is obliquely revealed. He apologizes to listeners
– family and friends – for unnamed mistakes (a Voiceover narration). The calm,
silent ocean is shown as he speaks, indifferent to his words. We see that he
faces his imminent demise, and he’s dispiritedly getting his affairs in order.
A caption appears, “8 Days Earlier”. The movie will tell the story of how he
came to such a pass. This opening is almost too lean, too devoid of emotion,
yet it expresses well Our Man’s emotional and physical exhaustion, inertia.
In momentum terms note that to tell such a story will
require a series of down-moves punctuated by shallow, brief up-turns.
The risk is that if Our Man falls too far too fast, it will strain credibility.
On the other hand if his fall is too slow, mild, and repetitive, it will lose
our interest.
Theme
The important elements of the protagonist’s world that have
predominance include: 1) he sees himself as self-reliant and a problem-solver,
2) he’s mildly estranged from the world, 3) he never gives up, 4) he respects
and works with the power of nature. Note how the five problems challenge these
elements of Our Man’s world.
Act 1
A Wounded Ship
Inciting Incident
Problem: Our Man wakes in his sailboat cabin and
steps down into several inches of water. A gaping hole has appeared in the hull
of his vessel, the Virginia Jean (VJ), at the waterline starboard aft.
Water will pour in when he banks to starboard. He further discovers the damage
is from a collision with a shipping container, still floating alongside his
boat. Boxes of running shoes have spilled out of a damaged corner of the
container’s door. His singlehanded cruise on this 39’ Cal sloop has been
irrevocably interrupted.
Decision: He sets to work sealing the hole by
jury-rigging a fiberglass patch. He scavenges wood from the boat to serve as a
plug beneath the fiberglass resin strips.
Turning Point 1
Problem: Two days later. A night storm rapidly
overtakes the VJ and he sets and locks his course into the wind, and rides it
out below in the cabin. He wakes and steps down into more water, higher this
time – the seal has ruptured. The storm escalates.
Decision: (commits to the story) He sails close to
the wind on a port tack and off the wind on a starboard tack, so the re-opened
hole is not submerged. He sails on through the storm. Our Man is committing
here, he clearly understands what is at stake, that his repair job failed, that
the Virginia Jean may sink during this far worse weather. He must get
back to shore, or be rescued, or die.
Act 2A
Virginia Jean Sinks
He wakes from a fitful sleep close to the companionway, and
decides the boat cannot be saved. Bringing out the inflatable dinghy, he tosses
it out, watches it inflate, and brings over gear he’ll need. He settles down
inside the sealed pod of the dinghy, still tied to his sailboat’s stern.
Midpoint
Problem: He sleeps, wakes, and watches his one friend
out here, Virginia Jean, now riding much lower in the water. She sinks,
as Our Man watches.
Decision: He takes out a map and starts on new plans.
Before this Midpoint it was him and the VJ struggling to
survive in the ocean. After this point it is him, now truly alone.
Act 2B
Fire
He consults the map again, and marks in a course to an Indian
Ocean shipping route, seeking rescue. Time passes.
Turning Point 2
Problem: A freight ship appears on the horizon.
Decision: He sets off a flare and waves a towel
overhead, but the enormous ship churns past, oblivious of his small vessel.
Later, it happens again, a second ship appears, it too passes him by.
He wakes at night to the chill of water – again. He
discovers a torn seam in the synthetic dinghy, and can see no way of sealing
it. A third ship appears.
Crisis Problem
Making a last desperate effort, he cuts open the empty water
container and starts a small signal fire in the makeshift fire-barrel. He feeds
the fire, stands up, and waves frantically at the passing ship. He turns to see
the fire spreading across the dinghy. It suddenly rises up, out of control.
Crisis Decision
(commits to the ending)
He pauses a moment, then dives into the ocean to escape being
consumed by the fire. He’s committing here to the end that is now upon
him, to the outcome his actions and fate have brought about. There is nothing
left he can do, his acceptance is complete. For this commitment to come through,
his decision must embrace the totality of what’s happened, and respond to that.
Crisis Climax
Treading water, he watches as his second vessel is lost to
him. The center of the raft entirely burns away. He finally yields – all is
truly lost. He takes a last breath, stops treading water, and starts gliding gently
down.
Slow Curtain
We don’t expect him now to survive. It is the eighth day
since the collision. As he descends into the ink-black depths, he looks up and
sees the still-burning outer ring of the dinghy, a radiant halo far above. It
grows smaller as he steadily sinks. His form is becoming indistinguishable with
the surrounding darkness. As he turns away another light appears far above,
near the fiery ring. A fluorescent spotlight is approaching the burning dinghy.
It seems so removed, so far away, silent, unreal. With effort he kicks and
starts swimming upwards. Rising from almost total darkness he approaches the
dual lights. He finally breaks surface … into a blinding radiance. FADE TO WHITE.
Story Arc and Desire
In Our Man’s Act 1 TP1 decision after a second storm undoes
his repair of the hole in the hull he sails off-the-wind to avoid being
flooded. In his Act 3 Crisis decision he dives into the ocean from the burning
dinghy and watches as it’s consumed, knowing he can’t fight much longer. The
story arc from TP1 to Crisis reveals that all means of survival have been lost.
The story arc change is one of ruin of all such means.
The middle Acts are used to show stages in the ruin. First
he loses the means of sailing to port himself when his boat sinks (Act 2A);
then twice he fails to be rescued by others when he can’t catch the attention
of passing ships (2B).
Our Man’s desire throughout is to survive, and as stated
above his goals serve that: sailing to port and seeking rescue in the shipping
lane using flares and then an open fire. His final action is to swim down to
his death, not waiting for it passively on the ocean’s surface. The stakes get
worse as each goal goes unmet.
When he sees his death is imminent desire falls away. He
stopped treading water, let himself sink a few feet, and then jackknifed and
started swimming down. I’ve noticed this in many films in recent years; often
desire seems to be transmuted in a story’s closing moments, as though the
protagonist goes beyond what he could not attain. Nor is it a mode of cognitive
dissonance.
Story Momentum
Our Man’s primary goal is to survive. In Act 1 his
subsidiary goal is to repair his boat enough to sail to the nearest harbor; in
Act 2A (after the boat sinks) it’s to row his dinghy into a shipping lane to be
rescued.
What’s at stake if Our Man can’t reach his main or
subsidiary goals is clear – he would drown. If this risk outcome was ambiguous,
story speed would stagnate. It isn’t, and our interest increases. Momentum
direction is four Acts down (things get steadily worse for him), with an up for
his rescue at the end. This overall momentum direction fits his dire situation.
Act 1
DOWN: The VJ is leaking through a hole at the
water-line, he jury-rigs a seal, a storm undoes his repair.
Up (TP1): He sails to ensure the hole stays above the
water-line.
Act 2A
DOWN: Despite his best efforts the VJ sinks.
Up (Midpoint): He transfers supplies to the dinghy,
and makes new plans.
Act 2B
DOWN: The shipping lane is far away for the dinghy.
He sails on.
Up (TP2): He arrives in the shipping lane, sets off flares,
two ships pass by.
Act 3
DOWN: In the midst of his out-of-control signal fire
he dives into the ocean, waits, and then lets himself sink.
Up: Rescue arrives.
The writer can consider momentum as the direction and tempo
of the plot points, where direction refers to whether a scene makes life better
(up) or worse (down) for the protagonist. Planning momentum in this way it does
help visualize the sweep of action in the story, among other benefits. The most
common patterns are “W”, “V”, or a prolonged down diagonal (for dark dramas,
and horror).
Each down-move in the story is serious and
life-threatening. Each effort he makes, each up-turn, solves the immediate
problem, until the next, more severe down-move overwhelms his counter-measure.
This continues until the boat is lost (Midpoint). Hope returns as he makes his
way into the shipping lane. Then the down-move resumes.
As described here, such escalating misfortune should appear
implausible, and our sympathy for Our Man should recede – but that doesn’t happen.
The author carefully makes each new negative event serious enough, but one that
Our Man is able to solve, just barely. He won’t give up, until there’s
literally nothing left he can do.
It’s structurally similar to a horror story – a long series
of steep down-moves intercut with brief rallies, with the final, surprising
up-turn of his apparent rescue.
Conclusion
The ending is the ultimate payoff for witnessing the
fascinating, painful lengths Our Man must go in his struggle to survive. To
observe his desperate last-ditch efforts, and then to share in his final surrender,
is a harrowing moment. We glide down with him, feeling the ocean’s darkness
wrapping itself around, and then watch, far above, the fading fiery halo of his
dinghy. His surrender, his final yielding to the end after struggling in vain
for eight long days, is deeply moving. Is Our Man’s rescue perhaps too good to
be true, a hallucination of rescue and survival? He swims up and breaks
surface, and in the closing FADE TO WHITE loses consciousness. It may be a
merciful hallucination moments before death, or perhaps he really is rescued.
The satisfying ambiguity is perfectly balanced.
