For his first feature film, Ben Rivers reunited once more with Jake Williams, the eccentric hermit whose ramshackle life deep in the Scottish wilderness is the subject of Rivers’ This is My Land and an episode from I Know Where I’m Going (2009). A captivating meditation on solitude and time’s passage, Two Years at Sea is a vivid and at times mysterious portrait of a man who seems to have found a genuine inner peace in the slow unfolding of his ritualized every day. The stunning imagery and visual imagination of Two Years at Sea derive a rare power from Rivers’ dramatic use of the pointedly anachronistic 16mm widescreen format—later blown up to 35mm—to cast a swirling photochemical energy around the ragged forest and overstuffed trailer that together constitute Williams’ home and universe. Almost entirely wordless, the film uses its richly evocative soundscape and extended long takes to fully immerse the viewer into the resonant tranquility of Williams’ life, with photographs and well-worn objects gently hinting but never revealing a past life shed long ago. – Haden Guest