By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 5 cats
Director: Ben Rivers
Year: 2025
Running time: 85
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32810133/reference/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_1_nm_0_in_0_q_bogancloch
Laks says: “I was listening to Joyeeta & Debojyoti Sanyal’s Raag Malkauns on the peaceful journey home from the HFA tonight, having been reminded of my love for Indian classical music as Jake Williams played his excellent choices on dusty cassettes found in a messy pile just chucked about the place. Jake being the sole focus of Ben Rivers meditative art house Two Years, At Sea in 2011. Ben Rivers returns in 2024 to make another film and I hesitate to call it a sequel but more like an unplanned follow up. The total opposite of the Up Series, in which the subjects may have inadvertently been damaged (one of the kids finds their way to the Scottish Highlands), where else in Jake’s and Ben’s case, it has tangibly uplifted everyone involved. When I first watched Two Years, At Sea, it was a sort of fairy tale set in the banality of Jake’s every day ablutions. I say fairy tale because I was steeped in hermit literature, particularly East Asian Buddhists and Daoists where back-breaking strife and pragmatic simplicitywas advocated. I relished so deeply in having the opportunity to revisit the many aspects what Two Years, At Sea meant to me, in Bogancloch on this quiet night in a nearly empty cinema with Jake Williams, Ben Rivers and the audience being 15 years older but still continue the dream of magical solitude in nature, not excluding profound literature and beautiful music either sung or played from dusty records. I nominate the gorgeous cat as best supporting actor. – 5 Cats”