Themes: Stranded, Survival in the Wilderness, Starting Over
Main Cast: Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, David Strathairn, Vanessa Martinez, Kris Kristofferson, Casey Siemaszko, Kathryn Grody, Rita Taggart, Michael Laskin
Release Year: 1999
Country: US
Run Time: 127 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Writer/director John Sayles once again takes his audience to a place they may never have been before (this time both psychologically and geographically). Joe Gastineau (David Strathairn) lives in Juneau, Alaska, where his life has been stuck in neutral for about 25 years. When he was young, Joe was involved in an accident on a fishing boat that led to the death of two crewmembers, and he's never recovered from the blow. When Joe meets Donna De Angelo (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), however, he starts to come out of his shell. Donna is a lounge singer who goes from job to job, wherever she can get work. Her life has been built around being able to pick herself up when she falls and learning to be comfortable wherever she lands -- a gift that her teenage daughter, Noelle (Vanessa Martinez), does not share. Donna and Joe become attracted to each other, and her example leads Joe to take a job on a boat again. However, just as Joe's life is starting to get back on track, his ne'er-do-well half-brother Bobby (Casey Siemaszko) arrives to ask Joe a favor. One disaster leads to another, and Joe soon finds himself stranded on an island with Donna and Noelle, trying to hide from a group of men out to kill him. Shot on location in Alaska by award-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler, Limbo also features a soundtrack with a new song by Bruce Springsteen, "Lift Me Up"; Sayles directed three Springsteen music videos in the 1980s. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
For his first film for a major studio in years, John Sayles chose a project uncompromising even by his own restrictive standards, although this might not appear to be the case at first. In its first half, Limbo, like Sayles' Lone Star and City of Hope, establishes with almost novelistic detail the details of a community, in this instance a small fishing town in Alaska. It's all the more shocking, then, when the film abandons its carefully established milieu for life on a desert island, but Sayles and his able cast make the shift work, the contrast between relationships in a community and relationships in isolation ultimately becoming part of the point of the film. Though it left critics divided in part due to a strange (but perfect) conclusion, this is every bit up to the level of Sayles' past work, even if part of its power comes from working against the expectations raised by his past. ~ Keith Phipps, All Movie Guide
Keith Neely - Art Director, Lizzie Curry Martinez - Casting, Shay Cunliffe - Costume Designer, John Powditch - First Assistant Director, John Sayles - Director, Sandy McLeod - Second Unit Director, John Sayles - Editor, Mason K. Daring - Composer (Music Score), Gemma Jackson - Production Designer, Haskell Wexler - Cinematographer, Maggie Renzi - Producer, Marco Rubeo - Set Designer, Judy Karp - Sound/Sound Designer, John Sayles - Screenwriter, Larry Goldin - Second Unit Director Of Photography
Set in the fictional town of Port Henry, Alaska, (although filmed in and around Juneau, Alaska) Joe Gastineau (Strathairn) is a former high school basketball star and fisherman who works as a handyman. Donna De Angelo (Mastrantonio) is a lounge singer. Noelle (Martinez) is Donna's daughter and a coworker of Joe's.
The first half of the film tells the relationship between Joe and Donna as they become romantically involved, and Donna negotiates a troubled relationship with her daughter.
Joe's dissolute brother takes the three along on a boat trip. The brother is murdered by drug dealers to whom he owes money and Joe, Donna, and Noelle are forced to seek shelter on an uninhabited island. The film takes its name, in part, from the uncertainty of their fate on the island.
Film critic Roger Ebert lauded the film and its story structure, writing, "What I liked so much about this story structure is that it confounded my expectations at every step. I expected the story to stay in Juneau, but it didn't. When it took a turn toward adventure, I thought the threat would come from nature—but it comes from men. After the three characters are stranded, I expected—I don't know what, maybe Swiss Family Robinson-style improvisation. But Sayles gradually reveals his buried theme, which is that in a place like the Alaskan wilderness you can never be sure what will happen next. And that optimism, bravery and ingenuity may not be enough."[3]
