Diminutive Michele (Vanessa Martinez - Lone Star, Limbo) is looking for love in all the wrong places. She stalks the disinterested Brother Daniel and looks up to the equally disinterested Linda. Her search for identity causes the girl to "try on" various roles. No one seems to care enough to help the confused girl emotionally; at the monastery, only her physical needs are attended to. The guestmaster protects her from physical harm during the badminton match, but her emotional and spiritual well-being are left to her alone.
Michele proves to be up the task when a graphologist callously interprets her handwriting, defining Michele simplistically and cruelly. Michele responds simply, "the librarian wrote it." By the film's end, Michele easily expresses her feelings, hugging Brother Bernard for caring enough to search for her. She returns from her mini-retreat enlightened, "I heard a bit of good news today," she tells the guestmaster, "In the end my immaculate heart will triumph."
Wendy Anderson (Sparkle, Something More) plays Linda who will not achieve Michele's enlightenment. Like Michele, she has "tried on" various identities, but unlike Michele, she wears them as gladly as she once wore the character of the "Fat Woman with the Thin Face." Oblivious to her real self, Linda wants to know all about and to control others. She forces herself on Michele as a self-appointed mentor, influencing the girl to make embarrassing choices.
Her nasty habits-drinking, smoking and thievery-have no place in this pristine setting. She callously tosses out the pictures stolen from Brother Bernard, just as she tosses out her young disciple-leaving her without a reciprocal farewell wave. Linda's self-induced blindness remains apparent to the end. The Guestmaster commiserates that she hadn't found what she came for, to which she glibly replies, "Oh I didn't come here looking for anything." She got what she came for.
Brother Bernard (Lothaire Blutea-Black Robe, Jesus of Montreal), a self-described "small man with big thoughts" struggles in his ivory tower to become the epitome of Benedictine monks - a man for whom "prayer is a positive force in the universe."
Bernard begins as the most solitude of the three misfits, virtually incapable of social interaction. Seeking life's meaning, he pores through scores of books, filling himself more information than he can remember, "Prayer is work. Hard work. One devout life can save 1000 souls or is it 10,000?" His is a frustrating search; he is "no closer to the truth," he says, " . . .than when I was six years old."
He expends all his energy on his internal struggle but holds out little hope for success. He finds himself "praying to believe. . . . Like my father I will die bitter and alone."
He is unable to think outside the church's frame of reference, "Who do we confess to if there is no God?" but a spontaneous hug from Michele transforms him. At last he understands, "Life is made up of small things. Encounters with sparrows. Dragonflies. . . . Perhaps it doesn't amount to much but having your feet on the ground, the sun on your face [is not a bad thing.] Not much else is knowable in this world."
The cinematography accurately depicts these beautiful small things, all colour and light and vivid imagery. Viewers can almost taste the plump raspberries in the monastery's edenic garden; the bright summer sky neutralizes the offensiveness of worm-eaten leaves; the deserted railroad crossing echoes the characters' loneliness, isolation and indecision. The palimpsestic silhouette of a crucifix stands out on a cinderblock wall. Beautiful architecture, quiet nature, brief human encounters, and three misfits seeking answers to life's questions: this is "Solitude."
Regina-based filmmaker Robin Schlaht dedicated three years of his life to this film, striving to demonstrate how "our actions have consequences for others" and leaving "viewers to interpret things on their own like the characters" in the film. "Solitude" is based on Schlaht and Connie Gault's short story "Fat Woman with Thin Face" written while on retreat at this same monastery.
Schlaht's award-winning films include "The Naked and the Nude" (1991 Saskatchewan Showcase Award for Best Student Film), "Making Angels" (1993 Saskatchewan Showcase Award for Best Drama), "Moscow Summer" (Best Foreign Film, 1996 WorldFest International Film Festival), and "Sons and Daughters" (1995 Best Experimental Film, Best Cinematography, Best Original Music).