Zoe Lucas has her own desert island. She shares it with hundreds of wild horses. For some, this might sound like a dream come true. But the kicker is that this is a true story. The island in question is called Sable Island, and it’s about 175km off the coast of Nova Scotia. It’s 20 miles long and about a mile wide. ‘Sable,’ of course, means ‘sand’ in French and it is indeed, mostly just sand, grass and dunes. The horses seem to have been brought to the island some time in the 18th century, but no one’s exactly sure when or why they were brought there. Their presence is as inscrutable as the island itself. Geographies of Solitude is a documentary about an island off the Canadian coast. But it’s also the kind of film that makes you wish you could live a thousand lifetimes.
Zoe came to the island decades ago after hearing about it. She wanted to experience it, and, after seeing it for the first time as a volunteer cook in 1974, she made it her mission in life to stay. Since the early 1980s, she’s been doing research on the horses, the flora and fauna as well as the marine garbage that washes up on the shore (she keeps a record of what she finds and where it came from). Clearly her way of life isn’t for everyone. But then again, the regular world clearly wasn’t for her either. Like an astronaut or an archeologist who spends decades sifting through Egyptian sands, Zoe has a tolerance for solitude that would break nearly anyone else. But for Lucas, this seems to have been the only life worth living. She has the mind of a scientist and a philosopher, living in daily contact with the most fundamental elements of life, death and eternity.
But the film, although it focuses on Zoe, isn’t really about her or her research per se. The film, directed by Jacquelyn Mills, is about the experience of being on Sable Island. It comes as close as a film can to recreating the feeling of being there. Geographies of Solitude offers us a direct encounter with the natural world. It brings together the elements of sky, sea and earth in what feels almost like a religious experience.
A profound sense of awe permeates every minute of Geographies of Solitude. The sun rises and the sun sets. Horses are born and raised and die. Their bodies nourish the grass and goldenrod young horses feed on. Wooden research stations are built and gradually they sink into the sand never to be seen again. Watching this film is like witnessing something eternal. Like Zoe, we feel the years and decades washing over us and imparting, we hope, some specs of wisdom.
One of the most fascinating aspects of this film is precisely how it wrestles with time. Because there are very few buildings on the island, and because Mills filmed the island at various points in time, the audience is confronted with the bewildering experience of watching an A-frame building being built, being used, being abandoned and then sinking into the sand. Because the island itself looks the same now as it did in 1981, we can’t initially tell which time is which. All these events seem to happen simultaneously. An uncanny piece of sea trash, a huge mass of tangled tubing, is also chronicled in the same way.
Rather than relying on a digital camera, Mills has used film to create Geographies of Solitude, and it was a brilliant decision. For one thing, it makes it even harder to tell the difference between a video shot 30 years ago and what she’s done. But she also inserted passages into the film that are simply, for example, what film exposed in starlight and processed in seaweed looks like. This might sound like the gimmick of a self-indulgent artiste, but in the context of this film, it makes perfect sense. Film is a physical medium that has been used to capture moments in time. But, as a physical medium, it is subject to the effects of time just as everything else on the island is. One generation passes away and another comes. The lone and level sands stretch far away.
I would not be able to do what Zoe Lucas does. But part of me wishes I had an extra fifty years to spend watching the life and changing seasons of this island. Geographies of Solitude brings us as close as we can ever get to having that experience.