Geographies of Solitude has many impressive shots of Nova Scotia’s Sable Island, a remote island almost 200 miles off the Canadian coast in the Atlantic Ocean. It starts with one of the most memorable shots, a night sky with more stars than you’ve likely ever seen in the sky before. The sheer number of stars makes the shot appear like an impressionistic painting, and the light is so bright, you even get to see a very clear silhouette of a person walking across the horizon. It’s an almost ASMR-type experience watching the opening with its complimentary ambient soundscape. It feels like you could watch the whole film without dialogue as the images and sound lull you into a trance, that it’s a surprise when there’s speech and we’re introduced to Zoe.
Zoe has been living on the island for over 40 years, mostly alone. We follow her as she explores the 12 square mile island every day to log any changes in the environment. She carries a kit with sampling pots and a notepad to capture anything new and log anything different she might see. Some days she might find a dead bird and on others she might encounter a new insect she hasn’t seen before, however, most days are repetitive logging exercises that track very small changes on the island. Despite the beautiful remote location, Zoe’s existence feels very monotonous and lonely.
The filmmaker, Jacquelyn Mills, takes the filmmaking to similarly exhaustive levels. Almost everything is shot using 16mm film, some of which is processed with a variety of experimental methods such as with peat, yarrow, and seaweed. Mills also pushes the soundtrack to the extreme with insect inspired melodies – literally music created to the steps of the local bugs. Both fit the subject of the documentary, as the experimental filmmaking matches Zoe’s own scientific experiments. However, the experimenting feels too exhaustive. There’s so much experimenting, it feels like the point of the experiments in the first place has been forgotten.
There’s a moment near the end of Geographies of Solitude in which Zoe questions the meaning of her own life. Her answer is a little melancholic as she seems to express doubt about her choice to live on the island for 40 years. She wonders if she’s stretched her life too long on the island and spent too much time away from everything else. The film feels a bit similar. The filmmakers have gone to extraordinary levels to make something unique – soaking film in peat and making music from bugs, but like Zoe’s endless logging, what is the point. Despite the beautiful location and beautiful shots, Geographies of Solitude is imbued with a melancholy for the futility of it all.
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