At the end of All Is Lost, when Our Man inadvertently sets his lifeboat on fire while trying to get the attention of some light he sees in the distance, he has to jump into the water and after a little while of swimming ultimately sinks down into the sea. But once he sees that the light comes from a little boat approaching his lifeboat, he swims back up and grasps a hand that extends into the water.
But after this last frame the movie actually fades to white, before having it switch to black and rolling the credits shortly after. Now the movie certainly is not some overly esoteric self-finding trip but rather quite straight to the point, which doesn't really make me doubt that there really was a boat and a hand reaching out to him. Yet this makes me wonder about that fade to white even more, because as far as I know fades to white are usually used to signify death. The script by the way doesn't actually have a fade to white but to black.
Has there been any information by the filmmakers if this was intentionally left ambiguous, playing with the death-meaning of the fade to white (or, god beware, even a clear statement that he did actually die) or was this just some unrelated stylistic choice without any deeper implications?