Review of The Sea of Trees (2016) by Scarlett S — 18 Dec 2016

The famed Gus Van Sant has an unfortunate strike-out on his hands with THE SEA OF TREES. In concept, the movie seems incredibly timely and rife with productive potential: THE SEA OF TREES is about a man coping with the grief of losing his partner and his journey to the notorious "suicide forest" (or "sea of trees") at the base of Mount Fuji. Stars Matthew McConaughey, Naomi Watts, and Ken Watanabe do their due diligence in studying their characters and attempting to bring authenticity to the personaes. Sadly, the actors often have little to do besides emote through a generally sad, but uninspired script. By uninspired, I mean that the script's author offers little insight regarding grief or melancholy - the movie feeds the audience a jumble of scenes highlighting the pain felt by its primary characters, but does not exactly resolve the major dialectics in any useful way. If there appeared to be some greater message in Van Sant and team's silence (e.g., some pain doesn't go away, some people find comfort in unconventional things) the that would be one thing, but the falling action and denoument is squandered on more mere emoting without heuristic value.

Meanwhile, Kasper Tuxen's cinematography delivers beautiful shots of nature to lull the audience - a lulling which can be very enjoyable and is clearly the outstanding achievement of the picture. Van Sant's direction is also adequate, but, ultimately unfulfilling: a movie can have lots of beautiful pictures, great acting talent, and adequate pacing, but still be for naught without care to bring meaning to the pictures, insightful lines to the actors, and excitement to the pace. The emptiness of THE SEA OF TREES is the most haunting aspect of the picture.