As I was building a shot list and analyzing stills from other films for a few short films, I noticed something. Most of these stills carry a mix of emotions, but there's always a common denominator: solitude. It runs through almost every film. It makes me think that the universal language of all humans, the one emotion everyone will experience and share at some point in life, is solitude. Some people might never feel love. Some people might never feel regret. Some people might never know hatred. But solitude seems inevitable.
In the end, maybe we are all alone in this world. Everyone has their own singular experience of life. No one can experience exactly what you experience, and no one can see exactly what you see. So how can anyone ever fully understand you? In some way, we are all alone.
But in this void, in this inability to share the exact same experience, I think films or literature or any art in general might be the bridge we can build between people. Maybe films are the bridge that connects one person's solitude to another's, a way to help others understand someone's interiority.
Maybe that's what draws me to film, at the end of the day. It's a tool to overcome, even just a little, the solitude of the human experience.
I feel lucky that the solitude I've experienced in my life has never been negative. My solitude has always accompanied me through all my other emotions: through my heartbreaks, through my triumphs, through my boredom. But it has never been cruel to me. Not yet, anyway.