Of Time, Narrative, and Cast Away

No, I am not a FedEx junky like Bettina the sculptress of angel wings in Robert Zemeckis's Cast Away, but, thankfully, I do have a FedEx account. Bettina is the sculptress of great, colorful wings, befitting Hermes, the tutelary god of messengers—the god of the FedEx man. Hermes, derivatively, is the god of those who interpret, such as psychoanalysts, particularly those psychoanalysts who, like myself, follow in the hermeneuticist tradition.

The film expresses the best of Hollywood in its dramatic and psychologically astute depiction of the physical, psychological, and spiritual challenges of the castaway—and the worst of Hollywood in its reliance on sentimental mush to emplot the challenge of interpersonal relationship. It is, really, two movies. We need to overlook the tedium and predictability of the love story and appreciate the cinematic artistry showing the castaway's plight. The film begins as it ends, at a crossroads somewhere in Texas—in the middle of a nowhere that contains the potential for everywhere. In ending where it begins, Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks)—a FedEx executive with legendary adherence to the company's ethos—is revealed as having entered an enigmatic dimension beyond both time and space. Relationally, he is suspended between the secularity of his fiancée Kelly who is contextualized by civilization and the city of Memphis, and the spirituality and aesthetic of Bettina whose isolation reprises his own. Annoyingly (to this viewer), in the final camera shot of the movie, Noland peers inscrutably into the camera as if to suggest something between himself and the film's audience. A touch of irony plays into his expression. We are supposed to imagine he has understood something about the real value of life, or whatever.