Video art that pretends to be a documentary. Ben Rivers is hardly a “director.” A director is a person-function whose main duty is to produce a film product that satisfies the conditions of one of the standard genres. Ben Rivers is more of a visionary artist. His creations are not films in the direct sense, but rather “pictures on film”. Moreover, the place for these paintings is not at one of the many biennials, where venerable critics and no less venerable viewers, walking around the halls, can spend a few minutes of their attention to some video art. No, the creations of Ben Reevers - a place on the big screen, in the cinema, where the viewer in the dark is atomized from the rest of the audience by the soft handrails of the chair and at the same time is one molecule with the entire cinema.
Two Years at Sea is a documentary about the life of hermit Jake Williams. For ninety minutes, the viewer follows one year in the life of a strange bearded woman living in the wilderness. There is no sea on the screen, of course. The sea is probably a metaphor for the lonely life of man in a vast world.
Rivers shows us the simplest and at the same time some unusual and magical things: here the hero washes under a homemade shower, walks through the snow, goes to bed in a small trailer, which rises during his sleep to the crowns of trees. No explanation for all the magic. Who is this man? A new saint, a hermit, a yogi, a Buddha removed from the world? Music resembling mantras seems to hint at this. But why, then, "enlightened" hermit to keep the house photos of people, and even on duty to look at them? There was an apocalypse in the world and there was no one left except the hero. But why is he so calm, cheerful, and where does he get gas for his car? Maybe the hero is just crazy? However, he conducts his household chores like a normal person: he washes socks, cooks beans, listens to music and plays with the cat. No answers. And to be honest, they're not needed. The film can be described as one year in the life of Robinson Crusoe. If there is no one around you, then you can entertain yourself in different ways and no one will point a finger and condemn: swim on a raft of canisters and an inflatable mattress on a puddle, make a fire, sleep in a tree house in the winter and admire the big house from there. This is not a fusion of man and nature, since the hero lives in the house and uses technology. It is the fusion of man and the world around him, the joy of life.
A magical aura is created by the techniques used by the director: an old, trembling film camera creates an almost defective “picture”, which also swings from side to side. However, all these scuffles, scratches, film "burns" and create that incredible effect of presence and unreality at the same time. The dominant gray color allows the film to become a single space, a full-fledged statement. Only by coming to terms with the visual features of the picture and the illogical nature of everything that happens on the screen, the viewer will be able to enjoy immersion in such a magical and attractive world of Ben Rivers and Jack Williams.