Thoreau and company – Film Review

There is something tempting about the purity of a hermit’s life. But I suspect that there is a difference between embracing the solitude and running away from other people.

If silence and isolation stimulate the whole person, it will be a generative experience; opening them to God, themself, and their neighbour (there are always neighbours, even in the wilderness).

If, on the other hand, one flees the company other people in order to rely solely on one’s own resources, one might find the wilderness to be a barren place.

I propose that the solitude of Jesus, and Thomas Merton, and the desert fathers and mothers, and also of Thoreau, is of the first variety.

The solitude of ‘Into the Wild’ and ‘The Sound of Insects: Record of a Mummy’ may draw its inspiration from Thoreau and company, but in both of these films the main character falls into the trap of solipsism.

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