Day 190 - 100 Days of Solitude

Day 190           100 Días de Soledad (100 Days of Solitude) [2018]

                    

Director                         José Diaz & Gerardo Olivares

Cinematography            José Diaz

Subject                          Spanish photographer José Diaz spends 100 days living alone on a remote mountain, connecting to nature and documenting the beauty of his surroundings.

Production                     Jose Maria Morales

IMDb                                N/A

Rotten Tomatoes              N/A

In this one-man’s-journey doc José Diaz heads out into the wilderness of Northern Spain for a bit of soul-searching. His idea? Spend one hundred days alone, without any human contact, in order to achieve some sort of inner peace. This film is not about survival, or living off the land, so don’t expect a Bear Grylls/Ray Mears masterclass. I think Diaz instead intended to get closer to nature and experience the peace that comes with separating oneself from the hectic reality of modern-day life. The first thing I’ll say is that I’m not going to scrutinize Diaz too much. I found myself questioning whether he was truly separated from man, or whether he saw the odd bloke out for a walk, as he isn’t too far from civilization. However, I think I’ll ignore my conspiracy theories and concentrate on the footage he got and the experience he had. My main gripe with Diaz is that not everyone is lucky enough to own a cabin secluded from the world in the picturesque Parque de Redes biosphere reserves. If I owned that cabin I would be living there for most of the year. It wouldn’t have been that hard to live there for the best part of three months. This leads on to the main point I have as I felt myself saying it under my breath as the film went on – ‘no shit!’. Obviously getting away from the world is great and of course nature is intrinsically beautiful and we should spend more time surrounded by it. Many, many people would do that if they could. That being the case I think that the film would have had more value if Diaz had spent a year or more out in the woods alone. If that was the case his musings on life may have had a bit more zip to them, instead they sounded like something he was reading off an inspirational quotes poster. Or perhaps he would have gone mad – now that I would have liked to watch. However, having said all that I can’t deny that some of his shots backed by his son’s music brought tears to my eyes. Half of the film is made up of drone shots (a surefire way to add production value to any film), but wow. There were also a couple of shots of spiders which belonged in a nature documentary which I suppose is what this was closest too. It’s the sort of film to watch that will relax the hell out of you as nothing too crazy happens. I suppose it wasn’t his fault, but I would have liked to see him chased by a boar or a deer at least.

Subject Matter                1 / 4

Shock Factor                  1 / 4

Production                   3.5 / 4

Music                          3.5 / 4

HWF rating             2.5 / 4