https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2335-7937
-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Graig Uhlin, Lifeboat films: cinematic responses to resource scarcity, Screen, Volume 66, Issue 1, Spring 2025, Pages 61–79, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjaf003
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
After shipwreck comes the lifeboat. A lifeboat offers the possibility of rescue from disaster by shepherding its passengers to their eventual arrival, often though not always, on some safer shore. Lifeboat narratives in film – their stories of protracted drifting on open water, exposure to the elements, the prospect of starvation and dehydration – dramatise the struggle for survival with meagre and dwindling resources in the aftermath of catastrophe. Classic cinematic examples of lifeboat narratives include Lifeboat (Alfred Hitchcock, 1944) and Seven Waves Away (Richard Sale, 1957), but this essay considers why the trope of the lifeboat became such a persistent feature in narrative filmmaking of the 2010s, the period notably following the 2008 global financial crisis. A non-exhaustive list of recent cinematic lifeboat films would include 2012 (Roland Emmerich, 2009), Life of Pi (Ang Lee, 2012), All is Lost (J. C. Chandor, 2013), Gravity (Alfonso Cuaron, 2013), Snowpiercer (Bong Joon-ho, 2013), Against the Sun (Brian Peter Falk, 2014), Unbroken (Angelina Jolie, 2014), The Martian (Ridley Scott, 2015), In the Heart of the Sea (Ron Howard, 2015), Adrift (Baltasar Kormákur, 2018), Styx (Wolfgang Fischer, 2018) and Society of the Snow (J. A. Bayona, 2023). Not all of these films feature a boat adrift on the ocean – obvious exceptions include the spacecraft of The Martian and Gravity or the downed aeroplane of Society of the Snow – but the nature of all the vessels is functionally the same: they offer their human passengers a minimal, often temporary level of protection against deadly exposure to a hostile environment. The lifeboat is marked by its spatial isolation and temporal suspension, characterised by a state of drifting that interrupts the directed movement of sailing, transport, migration, or other unimpeded operations that make up the normal circulation of goods and people. Any functioning vessel can therefore become a lifeboat once it is incapacitated, forcing its passengers to eke out their survival from what remains. Within this inhospitable space, a prolonged journey poses greater risks and a lifeboat narrative typically ends either with the passengers’ rescue or their demise.
