'All Is Lost' -- but not for Robert Redford who triumphs at sea.

• Position: News

All is lost, but then all is not lost if one can have Robert Redford kneeling down at their feet talking about his new movie,'' said my writer/director friend Linda Yellen, at the recent opening of Redford's new movie "All Is Lost'' at Lincoln Center.

The SRO crowd for the Film Society's opening of Redford's tour de force came apart applauding and screaming after the showing in Alice Tully Hall and surged across 65th Street to the Lincoln Restaurant. They had started by cheering young J.C. Chandor, who won his chance to make movies at Sundance back in 2011. (He wrote "Margin Call'' as his first try; and then sent Redford a 31-page script idea about a man lost at sea. It is a miracle that such a thing was ever made; only Redford could have made it happen.)

Redford likes to take chances and he took a chance on Chandor, an enthusiastic fast-talking and excited-at-his-own-idea kind of guy. The movie holds at the most a dozen spoken words but the sounds of the ocean and masts rippling and storms surging is enough for this film. Redford is magnificent as only he can be and it will be quite a battle if the Academy ignores his heroic physical acting effort in this unusual movie. And the way his silence transmits pain. He is as charismatic and as sympathetic as ever!

We are old...