I wondered why he chose sailing as venue for this film. This interview in the NYTs explains why.

" He didn’t think about dying while he was making his new movie about it, J. C. Chandor’s melancholy mariner’s tale, “All Is Lost.” He thought about enduring.

“I’m interested in that thing that happens where there’s a breaking point for some people and not for others,” he said over morning coffee recently in the deserted Owl Bar at his resort here. “You go through such hardship, things that are almost impossibly difficult, and there’s no sign that it’s going to get any better, and that’s the point when people quit. But some don’t.”