Review of The Sea of Trees (2016) by Dottheeyes — 25 Aug 2016

American teacher Arthur (Matthew McConaughey) flies to Japan to end his life in the island nation's quote-unquote suicide forest. Just as he prepares to overdose, a Japanese man (Ken Watanabe) emerges from the trees, his clothes filthy and his wrists bleeding.

Arthur agrees to delay his fatal plan to help the stranger find the trail, but both men realize they are lost, leaving them to endure the cold and navigate treacherous ground as they also reflect on what drew them to this foreboding place.

For Arthur, the primary reason involves his intense, troubled relationship with his alcoholic wife (Naomi Watts). Gus Van Sant is one of my absolute favorite directors, but The Sea of Trees may be his worst film, unfortunately.

He is as in control of aesthetic and mood as ever—the forest is an enigmatic and gorgeous location, alternately a deep, verdant dream realm and an eerie place of dense shadow and biting wind—and draws credible-if-overwrought performances from McConaughey and Watts, though Watanabe is hamstrung by a role too obviously designed to be exotic, inscrutable, and oh so wise.

And this brings us to the film's chief problem: the screenplay by Buried writer Chris Sparling is uneven and at times simply abominable. To call it contrived is an understatement: there is obvious trouble when a slice-of-life grief drama leans on Rube Goldberg-style twists and turns, each more maudlin than the next and often requiring laborious remember-this-earlier-moment?/it-was-a-clue! explanation.

The interplay of past and present is arbitrary and disorganized, the two prongs stunting the momentum of each other, and so many of the small details (the way certain lines are crafted, certain tensions introduced) ring false, defusing any potential emotional investment even as the music swells and totems of faux-import—mystical orchids, an unopened envelope—crowd the frame.