52docs / 26 - It loves you back

The Academy released the Oscar documentary shortlist this week and it’s a strong one, boiled down from 201 feature docs to just 15.

We’ve already watched three of them. I still can’t bring myself to recommend The Perfect Neighbor which made the list, and I feel similarly about 2000 Meters to Andriivka which will probably win the Oscar. It is undoubtedly extraordinary as a testament to the brutal banality of war (available on YouTube via PBS if you think your nervous system can handle it) but like Perfect Neighbor also turns us into voyeurs in a very intense and morally ambiguous way.

We’ll work our way through the remainder in due course, but in the meantime this week’s film demonstrates very different kinds of intimacy - between a human being and their surroundings, and between a filmmaker and their subject.

There’s a warmth which infuses this film that we need more of on our screens and in our lives: quiet respect, affection, reciprocity. Friendship even.

It’s hibernation season here in the Pacific Northwest so what better time to contemplate a life of quiet solitude in nature.

And if the film inspires you to disappear into the wilderness for the next 40 years don’t forget to take his book with you.

Review

Trailer

Free on Tubi or Kanopy in the US or via the BBC in the UK.