Review of The Sea of Trees (2016) by Spangle — 09 Nov 2016

I have seen far worse films than The Sea of Trees. Honestly, its harsh reaction at Cannes in 2015 feels as though it was quite unfair. Make no mistake, the film is not great. However, there are great elements within its mess of a story and the film is hardly worth laughing at. That said, the Cannes audience can be quite harsh and the film's sentimentality is certainly for everyone. While predictable, The Sea of Trees can be a moving tearjerker at times, but only when it really wants to be. Otherwise, it is a film that can seriously drag at times with incredible tonal shifts.

Jumping from suicide introspective to survival film to relationship drama to a heart warming and sentimental conclusion, The Sea of Trees struggles most often when in the forest. Traveling to the "Suicide Forest" in Japan, Arthur Brennan (Matthew McConaughey) is a heartbroken and depressed man who meets another man, Takumi Nakamura (Ken Watanabe) just as he is set to kill himself. What follows is the duo trying to get out of the forest with flashbacks to Arthur's life with his wife, Joan (Naomi Watts). It is in these flashbacks that the film truly delivers on its promise of being a thoroughly emotional film.

With a great relationship created between Arthur and Joan, director Gus Van Sant knows how to pull on the audience's heart strings. Though his approach is often obvious and predictable (the ambulance sequence), the film could work as a sentimental look at love and loss. However, Van Sant becomes obsessed with the forest. Though the forest is always lovingly shot by cinematographer Kasper Tuxen, there is not much of a story here. The survival element is silly and merely distracts from what the rest of the film is trying to accomplish. McConaughey and Watanabe just limp around the forest moaning in pain with very little to do and, as such, the film suffers greatly.

That said, one of the best moments does come in the forest when Arthur talks about his relationship with Joan, both the highs, the lows, and why he is in the forest. Here, the film finds it emotional power with McConaughey's great delivery of this monologue. From there on out, the film really turns into the emotional drama it should have been, though the punches it does throw are quite obvious. If you watch the film, you should have an idea by the 100th time Watanabe's character mentions the spirits in the forest. It is as if the film does not trust its audience to get it, so it starts laying the bread crumbs (heh) along the way to help lead you home.

This is why it is so unfortunate that the film itself gets lost in the forest. The forest, while interesting for a suicide drama, is not the focus in any world. The real dramatic juice comes from Arthur and Joan's relationship and that should have been the focus with flash forwards to Arthur in the forest with Takumi. Or, at the very least, not have them be lost in the forest, getting hurt, and struggling to get out. If Van Sant insisted on going in that direction, then it needed to be a straight forward survival drama where these two men learn they do want to live with no flashbacks. In other words, there were far better options than what we got, which is far too little of the flashbacks and far too much of the forest.

Now, what makes the flashbacks so great? Well, the film really instills them with an odd sort of warmth. Though what it shows can be quite the opposite, the flashbacks have a feeling that is unique within the film and capture the sentimentality the film wishes to imbue upon the audience. Essentially, it is this sentimentality for those near you whom you love and care about, even if things are not always great. The Sea of Trees captures this perfectly and is why these sequences work so well for the film.

Unfortunately, these scenes not plentiful enough. Instead, we get a film that jumps all over the place getting to its ending, drags heavily in the middle, and takes too long to get to the point. It is an unfortunate that this one wasted Watanabe entirely in a meaningless role and wasted good performances from McConaughey and Watts. As it stands, The Sea of Trees is not boo or laugh worthy, it is solely disappointment worthy given its promising cast, director, and positive elements.