Cast Away

Many of us have seen the classic movie Cast Away, a story of a man surviving the plane crash and living alone on an island, facing all the challenges of medieval human existence, going crazy over the cacophony of loneliness, brilliantly in acted by Tom Hanks. Generally, it is his survival that is more appreciated by audience, but I had always found the scenes from where he is saved as more profound. His confusion as to how to face his wife? Dinning along with friends yet unable to get rid of the loneliness, the scene where he turns on and off lighter and remember his own struggles to lit fire on the island, sleeping on the floor instead of the luxurious bed were brilliantly scripted and shot. The whole sequence when he goes to Kelly's house in the night, the inability of both of them to express the overwhelming emotions were the masterpieces of acting from both Tom Hanks and Helen Hunt. The scene where he leaves the house in car and that moment, her realization of loosing him again was intense.

The last but one scene in the movie where chuck explains to his friend, the camera angle moves around 270 degrees and Tom hanks delivered the dialogue in one shot. What a talented actor he is. The perfect pauses in between, the eyes caring the emotions of hopelessness to that of hope. He truly entered into the character. What process these actors must be following to get such a performance I wonder. I am not a critic but the sheer brilliance of all above scenes from the movie were genuine pleasures to watch. Unexpectedly I found that movie running on the TV today evening and made my day. Below is that dialogue which was a sheer masterpiece of scripting. 

Chuck Noland: We both had done the math. Kelly added it all up and... knew she had to let me go. I added it up, and knew that I had... lost her. 'cos I was never gonna get off that island. I was gonna die there, totally alone. I was gonna get sick, or get injured or something. The only choice I had, the only thing I could control was when, and how, and where it was going to happen. So... I made a rope and I went up to the summit, to hang myself. I had to test it, you know? Of course. You know me. And the weight of the log, snapped the limb of the tree, so I-I - , I couldn't even kill myself the way I wanted to. I had power over *nothing*. And that's when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket. I knew, somehow, that I had to stay alive. Somehow. I had to keep breathing. Even though there was no reason to hope. And all my logic said that I would never see this place again. So that's what I did. I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day my logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in, and gave me a sail. And now, here I am. I'm back. In Memphis, talking to you. I have ice in my glass... And I've lost her all over again. I'm so sad that I don't have Kelly. But I'm so grateful that she was with me on that island. And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?

Wait now till I find other such scenes from my other favourite movies, unexpectedly on TV, and I shall write them all.

 

Guilt - The spell check for human behaviour

Have you ever misspelled a word in Microsoft Word? Your word immediately get red flag. I must be back with some bizarre concept, otherwise why would I point out such a common thing? I believe if human behaviour is somewhat like a WORD document, guilt acts as the spell check functionality.

I know I know my analogies have lately degraded from Poetic to pragmatic to rather programmatic realm. But I can't help it either. Whenever a person does something wrong, a small pinch of guilt is added in the back of his mind which pops up every now and then until we do something about it. Recently I had similar experience. Just for the sake of not disclosing my revelation let me build up an abstract scenario. Long back I did something which was unforgivable. I realized it but due to other distractions in life, I neglected it. But it was looking right into my eyes, just like the gollum looks creepily from shadows towards the ring. One fine day, who I am kidding with, ok today, somebody hinted something to me which brought the guilt right in front of my eyes. There was no escape. I tried as usual to diverge my attention to other 'Important' things, but suddenly everything around me started loosing its important. When you neglect a spell check and keep on writing, a time comes when the red underline irritates you beyond your control. You finally right click on the word and replace the correct word. In real life, I am planning to do something so that I will get rid of that guilt. They say, 'Apology can mend anything'. I say, 'Apology with an action will mend everything.' I know not all the words in our document..err..our behaviour can not be clean, but then that's it. Sometimes you write something which is red flagged but you eventually add it to dictionary. What would that mean in real life, I would say, the dictionary represents your value system. You keep on modifying it over the years. So you may have noticed as you grow old, some of your beliefs change drastically. May be you have updated the dictionary. These thoughts are worth pondering upon.

I am done with blabber of a day.

Disclaimer: Both the quotes were invented by me.