Like all good sailors do: All Is Lost

The J.C. Chandor-Robert Redford All Is Lost is a tour de force, completely held my interest and attention - striking how much it's like the nearly contemporaneous Gravity, both stories of an individual fighting alone against technical and natural challenges to recover from a terrible accident in near or complete isolation and to return to the safety of society and family. Not an orbiting spacecraft this time but a sailing yacht on a solo voyage, probably round-the-world, it's never specified, crippled by an at-sea collision. Redford - in a role w/ almost no dialogue and in a movie with no other actor even for a moment - shows the typical sailor's competence and ingenuity in recovering from one setback after another - repairing a gash in the hull with mesh and a repair kit, navigating by sextant, drying out batteries, devising a hand-made bilge pump - I would have given up at day one and sat still and hoped (futilely, no doubt) for miracle rescue. It's in a way a very painful movie to watch, as Redford suffers through almost Job-like tortures, but it's also triumphant in a way, too,, as he never gives up or gives in and seems, like all good sailors, prepared for any emergency or contingency, with redundant backups. I am often very troubled by these high-anxiety movies but much less so in this one, as I knew I would never be in that situation in the first place - though plenty have been. Is there some kind of message in a bottle here, some reason why these two movies of individual struggle and technical ingenuity and incredible forbearance and cool under pressure have emerged at the same time? Interesting in that in neither case is there a human antagonist. I'm sure some have said these are paradigms for life in America (or on Earth) during times of great technological change - what happens if we're cut loose from all that technology and left to our own "devices"? Maybe it's a metaphor for the Obama administration, one setback and torment after another, but moving forward, moving on. Or maybe nothing of the sort - just a good adventure movie that will take you for 90 minutes away from your own troubles.