‘Mount Pleasant’ is one of the short documentaries that aims to tell us the story about the beauty of simple life. A young man – who is apparently a guitarist too – lives at his farm in Mount Pleasant dealing with long days of hard work and very simple food. He is however very happy with his way of living and would not change it to anything else in the world.
Director Ivo Garland’s film speaks about the power to find peace in the most simple things. Routine – because a farm does require a daily routine – is just part of the daily job for living, exercising abilities, disciplining the mind and spirit. It’s what rewards the young man with satisfaction at the end of the day. The hard work during the day, the simple life and food enhance his senses that have been taught to react to and enjoy the simple pleasures of life: playing guitar, watching sunsets under a tree, reciting poetry, enjoying a beer. It’s a life shared between hard work and ‘poetry’.
This kind of life enriches a man with a different kind of ownership defined by … owning one’s own self and being in charge of one’s own life as independently as possible. It is also a kind of life that makes somebody reign over his own temptations and find them rather unappealing.
We would have liked to see more of the daily routine, some of the problems that this kind of life arises, the part of this kind of living that withholds it from a total separation from society and a more explicit, clearer way of making it obvious if the story’s hero is an entirely solitary man or if he is being helped by others or what kind of human interactions he has.
Otherwise the film has managed to capture a very interesting feeling, forcing you to imagine the amplitude of success sprung from the satisfaction at the end of the day.
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