J.C. Chandor’s third feature, A Most Violent Year, is set in 1981 New York City, a year that saw a dramatic spike in criminal activity (hence the odd title). Oscar Isaac plays Abel Morales, a young, self-made entrepreneur and family man who runs a heating oil business with his mob-princess wife Anna (Jessica Chastain), who handles the books. He’s an ambitious, confident mogul who’s always moving forward. His competitors in the cutthroat home-heating market run their operations like mobsters, but Abel’s got more class than that. He covets transparency and morality, and unlike his rivals, he can sleep at night with a clear conscience (though he’s no stranger to shady back room dealings). “I run a fair and clean business, and I will fight to my last breath to prove that.”

A Most Violent Year is about a man protecting his honor at all costs while the rest of the world, even his family, conspires to strip him of it. The son of Hispanic immigrants, Abel started from the bottom as a heating-oil truck driver and eventually moved up the ranks, married his boss’ daughter, and bought the company from his father-in-law, who played the game as dirty as Abel’s rival merchants. With the company in his hands, he turned things around and made it a clean operation. He’s looking to expand, too: a piece of waterfront real estate looks to be the key to cornering the oil market, and he’s got 30 days to close the deal.

Abel’s a man of conviction, constantly in pursuit of the American dream, but all that surrounds him is nightmarish. The rampant violence and corruption of the city threaten to tarnish his squeaky-clean business on the daily, and jeopardize his chances of closing the waterfront deal. As a result of the vicious turf war, his truck drivers are getting held at gunpoint, his salesmen are getting roughed up, and he even finds an armed goon prowling around his McMansion late at night while his wife and kids are home. Surely arming himself and his crew for protection would be the smart thing to do, but he’s not cut from that cloth.

Reluctantly, Abel allows his drivers to carry guns on their deliveries (the first in a series of moralistic compromises), but refuses to tote one himself. When Anna buys a pistol as a knee-jerk reaction to the would-be home invader, Abel loses his mind. “I don’t want anything do to with this!” he roars. If he or she were to ever be seen holding a gun, his reputation would crumble. Adding to Abel’s stack of problems is a district attorney (David Oyelowo) who’s sniffing around the oil industry in search of corruption and malfeasance. It’s a terribly twisty plot, but Chandor’s pace is set at a slow, steady boil to make it digestible. The tension mounts in small increments, until it’s so thick by the film’s final act you feel like you’re suffocating (in a good way).

On two separate occasions Chandor shows us Abel running through the sooty, sapped NYC streets, and together these scenes comprise the film’s most poetic artistic statement. As the film opens, we see him on a morning exercise run, flying past graffitied walls, past run-down buildings, past the urban malaise: he’s running toward a brighter future. Later, we see him running again, in an impeccably-shot foot chase sequence on railroad tracks that sees him hunting down an enemy, gun in hand, with vengeance and violence on his mind: he’s running toward the devil. He’s lost himself, and the film’s real suspense lies in the question of whether Abel’s will is strong enough to not succumb to the unscrupulous ways of the crime lord.

Isaac is a convincing kingpin, always looking invincible in his mustardy double-breasted coat, but Abel’s so monomaniacal sometimes that he feels less like a human being and more like a crime movie cliché. The same can be said for Chastain, who acts with so much kick and venom that it’s a hit-or-miss situation: she either nails Chandor’s sizzling one-liners and looks like a badass, or she overshoots her lines and comes off like a factory-issue mob-movie wife (the wonky Brooklyn accent doesn’t help). They’ve got chemistry together, though, and generate some real energy in their heated domestic arguments. Taking nothing away from their acting abilities (I’m a big fan of them both), I don’t feel like they were necessarily the best fits for their respective roles.

One piece of the story that feels under-developed is the reasoning behind Abel shedding every bit of his immigrant heritage. One can easily suppose that he did it to make his image more appealing on his way up to the top of the mountain, but that’s an uninteresting supposition to make. Julian (Elyes Gabel), one of Abel’s drivers who gets hijacked and beaten, is Hispanic as well, and Abel’s conversations with him are the only time we hear him speak Spanish. There’s a loose symbolism that Julian represents the former life Abel’s left behind (to detail this would be too spoiler-y), but it’s clunky symbolism at best.

Like Chandor’s first film, Margin Call, A Most Violent Year boasts a supporting cast of vets that add gravity and richness to the proceedings. Oyelowo, Albert Brooks, Peter Gerety, and Jerry Adler make brief, but impactful appearances. Bradford Young’s (Selma, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints) cinematography is ashy, atmospheric and textured, and coupled with the phenomenal period set and costume design makes New York City look downright apocalyptic compared to the shining culture hub it is today. Chandor pays homage to Sidney Lumet’s Prince of the City and Serpico as far as the milieu he’s created: it’s a city full of tough guys and alpha dogs who were born to screw each other over and hold meetings in dingy, poorly-lit rooms.

A Most Violent Year is my least favorite of Chandor’s films. I’m still a fan, though; the fact that he went from All is Lost, a boiled-down fable pitting a man against the elements, to a labyrinthine crime picture like this verifies for me that he’s one of the most exciting directors working today. Just like Abel, it’s not in Chandor’s nature to sit still; he’s always moving forward.

All is Lost reveals the true essence of who Robert Redford is as an actor as much as any other film in his career, which spans over half a century. It’s a story of survival at sea, stripped bare, down to the bone: One man. One boat. One ocean. One question: In the end, when all is lost, is life worth fighting for?

The film opens with a voice-over by Redford, in which he confesses he “fought to the end,” but doesn’t know what that’s worth (we’re given no backstory on Redford’s nameless character, because we don’t need it). We then flash back to the beginning of his sea-faring woes; a freshly-punched hole in the side of his boat, caused by a giant crate full of sneakers that’s fallen off the back of a much bigger boat. He keeps his composure as he assesses the damage, and quickly begins patching up his humble home on the water.

His problems accumulate: his fresh water supply gets contaminated, he’s running out of food, the crushing weather continues to batter the boat, and his radio’s been shorted out. The seriousness of his situation slowly whittles away at his once cool composure, and we watch helplessly as what’s left of his fighting spirit is exhausted. Why does he continue to fight?

You’ll ask yourself that question over and over again as we watch his situation become more desperate. That’s because writer-director J.C. Chandor gives you no other choice; he doesn’t cloud his story with traditional devices like plot, exposition, and dialogue. As the pounding elements punishes the sides of the boat and we hear the deep bellow of an approaching storm cloud in the distance, we’re constantly reminded of the bitter inevitability that nature will devour him (and us). Yet still, even with death at his doorstep, Redford fights for his life. But why? Surely it would be easier for him to give in accept his fate. The question swirls around in your brain throughout the entire 107-minute length of the film, growing more potent, powerful, and moving as it sinks in.

Chandor pushes Redford’s skills to the limit, giving him no crutches to lean on. He’s given only three (short) lines of dialogue to work with. His character has virtually zero backstory, operates in a tiny, isolated space, and has no other characters to interact with. He’s tightrope walking without a safety net, and he rises to the occasion like only a screen veteran could.

Redford’s forced to communicate emotions and ideas to us with the most primitive of tools; his face and his body. He’s the perfect “old man at sea”; as the boat creaks, so do his joints. He scrunches his weathered face and furrows his brow as he labors to keep his boat from falling apart. We see him rub the skin his hands raw as he operates a manual water pump for hours. His eyes glimmer with hope when an idea strikes him, and when nature thwarts his schemes for survival, we see his spirit deflate as he slumps down in defeat. Chaplin and Keaton would be proud.

This is one of the best performances of Redford’s career. Look at this virtually silent, understated performance, and then look at his charming, verbose, bombastic turns in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting, and you’ll see just how staggering his range is as an actor.

All is Lost is best viewed in the dark box of a movie theater, primarily due to the unbelievably immersive sound design. It’s amazing to watch Redford ‘s reactions to the swarm of creaks and bumps that surround him on the boat, which are positioned perfectly on the speakers. When we hear a loud bang, his eyes dart to exactly where we heard it. It really does cast a spell on you; as I watched him wade his way through the flooded cabin, a muffled thunderstorm raging outside, I caught myself shivering, even though it was perfectly warm in the theater.

The storytelling Chandor employs harkens back to directors like Vertov, Akerman, and Kubrick, who with their work made the bold assertation that the clash of image and sound is all you need to tell a story. Nothing more. He keeps his camera close to Redford at all times, so that we can identify with him on a deep level. When he’s exhausted, we’re exhausted. When he’s encouraged, so are we. I struggle to think of a film more cinematically immersive. What’s amazing is, this silent, almost experimental film is Chandor’s follow-up to Margin Call, a dialogue-driven ensemble piece. Just as All is Lost is a testament to Redford’s range, it’s a testament to Chandor’s, as well.

The film’s conclusion is a disappointment and feels at odds with the message of the film. If you cut off the final two minutes, All is Lost would be a bonafide masterpiece. Still, it can’t undo the brilliance of everything that precedes it. This is a glorious piece of cinema that revels in the core values of silent film, a tale of man versus nature that speaks to the heart rather than the mind.

In All is Lost, JC Chandor’s man-at-sea movie starring a 77-year-old Robert Redford, the director takes a dramatic departure from his dialogue-driven ensemble piece, Margin Call, and delivers a moving, intimate piece of cinema that, quite simply, follows a man on a boat as he fights to survive crushing waves, rainstorms, starvation, and all the mental and emotional trials that come along with it. Redford’s performance–which is nearly silent (he only has three lines in the film)–is as captivating as any he’s given, but in a way that’s wholly unique.

We spoke to Chandor about how you must see this film in the theater, his choice to go the silent route, the difficulties of filming a boat capsizing, Robert Redford’s ego, and more.

All is Lost is in theaters this Friday, October 25th.

The film is pure cinema, essentially silent. It’s different than Margin Call on that and a lot of other levels.
Most of my directing up until this point was in bizarrely action-y sports commercials. When I was coming up, that was the only thing that would allow cheap production values. I thought it was a good entry point. I was doing stuff for DC Shoes, Red Bull. Margin Call, as a writing piece, was a chamber piece, basically. I wanted to get out of that, as a director.

Was it refreshing?
It was. It ended up being exhausting and intense. I went a little too far in one direction (laughs). There was also something fun in the way Margin Call was released. I gave in to the fact that it was going to be released day-and-date, because I actually thought it would be better for the film and more people would see it. It can be seen on a smaller screen and still have the same impact. For [All is Lost], that’s not the case at all.

I completely agree.
You have to see it in a movie theater. I love that about it. A lot of the films this fall have that in spirit. They realize that there is something great about the film experience. Not all stories need three years to tell them. Some people’s lives are most interesting just for a moment.

There’s a spectacular shot where the ship barrel-rolls. How the hell did you shoot that?
We had chopped off some of the bottom of [our ship] so it was easier to keel. They basically sprung-loaded it. They were pulling the ship from one side–jacked it, jacked it, jacked it–then essentially had a release. They popped the release, the boat started going, flipping. The whole trick of the movies is that, within any 40 second sequence, there’ll be six or seven totally different locations we use to shoot it. It’s all done like a jigsaw puzzle–it’s post traumatic stress syndrome. I don’t even want to think about it (laughs). We had to organize it, because it was shot out of order. Moment by moment, shot by shot, it was completely out of order. We had my editor right there in the studio and near the port in Mexico where we were doing a lot of the shooting, so I would just check in with him. It was very efficient–I could be walking from one tank to another, one stage to another. I’d just be constantly how things were working and learning what was getting used and what wasn’t.

That’s the only shot that’s blatantly, admittedly a stunt guy swimming up as it’s [rolling]. That’s the one divine intervention moment of the film, where it’s good luck instead of bad luck, but it’s just luck. Bizarrely, most of the people who go overboard and live to tell the story had something weird like this happen. For everybody else who falls overboard–which is, like, 90 percent of them–it ends there. There are these stories where a person will get washed over by a wave, but the wave has such a huge pattern that it’ll sometimes suck you back [to the boat]. People talk about literally being “dead” in their mind, and then being sucked back. We thought that was pretty cool.

Your camerawork is really, really intimate.
The film was totally meant to be that you are just in the moment with this guy. We shot the film in the style of a “bungie cord effect”, as I like to call it. Essentially, we shouldn’t be more than 6 or 7 feet away from this guy, ever. Every shot is eye-level, hovering over his shoulder. You’re always right there. We shot most of the movie handheld. There’s not dolly in the movie because it’s a boat, so you don’t want a dolly on it (laughs). We had a 60-foot Technocrane, and the crazy thing about that tool is, the tendency is to do a J.J. Abrams type shot. He’ll have two or three huge Technocranes all kind of dancing around something, which is beautiful in that context. This film was about feeling you were literally hovering with this guy. The cool thing is, that tool allowed me to hover anywhere in such a quick way. It wasn’t about the tricks you could do once it was there. It was about quickly being able to reach out to a particular spot in the action or follow along with him where you sort of float along. We had these amazing operators. Your tendency is to say, “Now, swoop up and see what he’s doing!” Then, you’d immediately realize, that’s just Robert Redford climbing around on a weird little boat. It took us the first week or two to realize that. The two shots that peel away the furthest are there for very specific informational purposes, like showing the hole in the boat. Besides that, the [camera] is tight.

Talk a bit about Robert’s performance. It’s almost entirely physical, and he looks perfect for the part.
Yeah, he’s led that kind of life (laughs). There are tricks that you can do when preparing for a role, frankly, that aren’t plastic surgery or anything, but can make you look better. He could have required me to do things to make him look better, but he didn’t. He knew that that was where I was going with it as a look, and he–at this point in his career–embraced that, which is awesome. “This is what I look like.” It was about pushing himself. He admits–in a joking fashion–that his ego kicked in. He didn’t have to do all those stunts, but once he started to, he liked it (laughs). He’s tremendously fit. He’s so athletic. I think his knees are starting to be a little arthritic because he’s used them so much, but his upper body is fitter than I am. He’s ripped. We built triple rows of handholds into the boat, and as long as he was firmly planted with his hand on something, he was able to do whatever. It was pretty amazing.

In the same way that Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman is about a woman’s work, this film feels like it’s about a man’s work–he’s patching things up, lifting things, fixing things.
The whole point of the film is that what he’s doing is not necessary in any way. The boat serves no function besides enjoyment. There’s a sense of false adventure to the adventure. He gets his adventure, but from that point forward he’s kind of stuck in it (laughs). I would question to call it “work” in only that the fact that it’s all forced was pretty integral. It’s strictly about survival in its most basic form. There’s no other purpose to it.

I love the first line in the film. Do you think what this man does in the film is worth anything?
Yeah, I do. He says, “I fought to the end. I’m not sure what that’s worth, but know that I did.” I think, for him, making sure people knew that he fought to the end was very important. It is for me, too. It’s certainly my relationship with life and death being worked out in the film.

On MVFF’s gigantic penultimate day, a quintet of some of the industry’s most exciting directors gathered for a meeting of the minds, the stars and directors of At Middleton and Beside Still Waters unveiled their respective films to packed houses, and the whole lot of them partied it up in the beautiful town of Tiburon, right down the road.

Filmmaker Superfriends

To start off Day 10 of the festival, a killer lineup of directors gathered to participate in a panel organized by Variety, in which they discussed the industry and their filmmaking processes. In my previous festival recap, I mentioned that Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station) asked Steve McQueen a question during the 12 Years a Slave Q&A; McQueen didn’t seem to notice that the young buck was a talented filmmaker himself at the time, but when the two met officially for the Variety panel they became fast friends. Joining Coogler and McQueen for the panel was J.C. Chandor, who helmed the Robert Redford “man at sea” film, All is Lost and 2011’s Margin Call. We spoke to Chandor about the film, so keep an eye out for our interview next week. Also in attendance were John Wells of August: Osage County and Scott Coooper of Crazy Heart and Out of the Furnace.

Click to view slideshow.

Andy Garcia’s Campus Romance

At Middleton,  directed by newcomer Adam Rodgers, focuses on a sporadic on-campus romance between George (Andy Garcia) and Edith (Vera Farmiga), who meet while accompanying their kids on a campus tour of Middleton University. A walk-and-talk rom-com cut from the same cloth as Richard Linklater’s Before series but with a more lighthearted flare, the film was received incredibly well by the Mill Valley audience at CinéArts@Sequoia, who expressed their enthusiasm during the post-screening Q&A with Rodgers, Garcia, and the films’ producers. “When you have a chance to play with [an actor like] Vera Farmiga,” Garcia gushed, “[the scenes] are all fun.” The chemistry developed between the accomplished actors, amazingly, took no time to develop at all. “We never even read the script together once,” Garcia said, to the surprise of the audience, who had been so taken by the screen romance. “We got to know each other as the characters did on camera. She’s incredible.”

Future BIG Movie Stars CHILL in Beside Still Waters

A few feet down from the At Middleton screening, another movie about people talking was pleasing a separate batch of MVFF-goers. Chris Lowell, an actor best known for his roles in Veronica Mars (the “kickstarted” film version is shooting now) and The Help, hops into the director’s chair for the first time with his nostalgia-driven hangout movie, Beside Still Waters. In it, a tragedy causes a group of old childhood friends to reconvene at the memory-filled cabin in the forrest they grew up playing around in (no, it’s not a horror movie). The cast, comprised of some of some of the prettiest rising-star actors in the game right now (just look a the pictures!), were all in attendance at the MVFF screening along with their incredibly excited director, who was all smiles during the audience Q&A. “I was really excited to direct [and] talk to actors the way I’d like a director to talk to me,” Lowell beamed. “That was probably the thing I was most thrilled about. That, and not having to go through hair and makeup in the morning.” Comparisons to the king of all hangout movies, The Big Chill, are inevitable, and Lowell didn’t shy away from acknowledging the influence of Kasdan’s film, which has a strikingly similar premise. “[My co-writer Mohit Narang] and I obsessed over every conceivable reunion [movie], to see what people did right and wrong. The Big Chill is obviously the big tentpole film for [this kind of movie], which is why everyone comes back to it. It’s a film that you watch when you’re sick because it makes you feel good and right about the world.”

Worlds Collide…Over Cocktails

After the dual screenings of At Middleton and Beside Still Waters, the buzzing crowds and proud filmmakers met again at the Tiburon Tavern just down the road to schmooze, booze, and enjoy delectable bites of delicious food (the coffee-coated cheese was curious, yet excellent). Andy Garcia and the Beside Stll Waters cast were happy to mingle, keeping the good vibes flowing along with the bubbly. Lowell and Rodgers, both elated to have their films so well-received, shared their experiences and a big, congratulatory hug.

Stiller Closes Out With Mitty

MVFF closed out big with what looks to be one of the most visually striking films of the year, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Ben Stiller unsurprisingly drew a blitz of media and fan attention when he arrived at the CinéArts@Sequoia theater to present his passion project, about an office worker (played by Stiller himself) who lives in picturesque fantasy worlds represented onscreen beautifully by Stiller and DP Stuart Dryburgh (The Piano). After the screening, Stiller was given the Mill Valley Award and then headed down the street to San Rafael’s beautiful Elk’s Lodge where everyone–from the hard-working festival staff, to the filmmakers, to industry people, to the excited festival-goers–celebrated as the wonderful 11-day festival came to a close.

But wait…that’s not all! We’ve still got a ton of content coming out of the festival, so stay tuned in the next few days for more MVFF goodness!