All Is (Not) Lost

With my brother Phil, I recently watched the Robert Redford movie about a stranded sailor and his ferocious struggle to survive. The metaphor between film and Phil cuts deep.

When I visit my brother Phil these days, there's not a lot of conversation.

The really good news is that he's been sober for 2 1/2 months. But his years of alcohol and drug abuse have taken a heavy toll. His body aches all over and moving around comes with great difficulty. He seldom leaves his studio apartment.

As he acknowledges, he's not the most entertaining company.

His refuge is his movie collection, where he can immerse himself in other stories.

Last week, though, he shared his own. It came in the form of "All is Lost."

I hadn't heard of the film and if you haven't, either, here's the gist: The entire cast of the 2013 production is one man, Robert Redford. He plays "Our Man," as the credits refer to him at the end, who is skippering a boat solo when it gets stranded in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

We'd seen the first 10 or 15 minutes on my previous visit a few days earlier, but I had to cut my time short. When I see him on this particular night, Phil has "All is Lost" ready to start on the screen that's anchored at the foot of his bed.

He's got hundreds of movies in his collection. Of all those, he is intent on sharing this one. This is Phil speaking to me.

I keep my coat on, pull a chair closer and Phil presses "play."

After a little while, it occurs to me that the scenario is, at least metaphorically, how I've come to see Phil: as someone who's chronically in danger of drowning--in addiction, in despair, in all the perils that have come with his lack of housing over many years.

"Can you relate to this character?" I ask.

"Yeah," comes Phil's immediate reply. "Only I'm not as stupid as him."

I chuckle and then re-focus on the film. Online, I later read that Redford's character utters 51 words, or about one word for every two minutes of screentime. That matches my interactions with Phil these days.

In contrast to his usual talkativeness before his overdose in September, our visits now are marked by minutes of silence interspersed by a comment or two about a plot development.

As for "All is Lost," the longer it plays, the more the plot brings forth echoes from Phil's life.

Here, Our Man fruitlessly tries to get the attention of a passing freighter.

Our Man is a man of action and reaction, responding to a series of events that continually threaten to take him down to the ocean floor. Sometimes, he messes up; other times, nature and circumstances beyond his control are an unrelenting, merciless foe.

But for every setback, Our Man proves resilient and resourceful. Time and again, the difference between life and death is an exceedingly thin line. More than once, Our Man's body language and facial expressions suggest he's on the brink of giving up. Somehow, each time, he hangs in there.

That's the general outline of Phil's entire adult life.

Eventually, as Our Man strains to guide his battered boat into shipping lanes so that he can be saved, he has to abandon the sinking ship and take refuge in a life raft.

Below this desperate scene are a few scattered DVDs from Phil’s collection.

Then the raft is compromised by raging storms and eventually by the consequences of Our Man's desperate attempt to attract the attention of the latest in a series of tantalizingly close boating passers-by.¹

Will he get help in time?

There's some debate about the meaning of the film's closure: Does Our Man survive?

My initial reaction is that Our Man is saved by a passer-by; Phil tells me he thinks Our Man drowned and it's Jesus Christ's hand he latches onto at the end.

Either way, that's art....here in the real world, my brother's resilient choice to remain sober is an extraordinary plot twist giving me hope that all is not lost for him.

1. I'm keeping these details sparse. Though the film has been out for 11 years, I’m really trying not to spoil it—in fact, I recommend it.