In the movie “Cast Away,” a driven Fed Ex official survives a plane crash, isolation on an island and a daring open-sea voyage only to be rescued and discover that his fiancée has moved on – marrying and having a child – during his four-year absence.
“You were the great love of my life,” he observes in their farewell reunion, realizing that though he has lost her, she was there when he needed her most – on that island, in his mind, keeping hope alive during all those years of solitude.
Spoiler alert: At the end of the movie, he delivers the one unopened package from the crash and, though the last shot shows him standing at a crossroads, we’re lead to believe that he will form an attachment with the woman the package was intended for. Indeed, you could say that everything he went through was designed to lead him to that moment.
I was reminded of this listening to President Donald J. Trump’s continuing rants against the French and their president, Emmanuel Macron.
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