No.
Hell No.
Gus Van Sant’s latest film, The Sea Of Trees would be a nadir of his career had he not remade Psycho. From the ground up, The Sea of Trees is a miscalculation of melodrama. It has one goal, and that’s to make you cry through ANY PLOT POINT NECESSARY. Does suicide make you cry? How about bad marriages? What about gendered expectations? Maybe cancer? Does cancer make you cry? What about mystic spirituality and angels? Nostalgia? Children’s books? Come on people… HOW THE HELL CAN WE MAKE YOU CRY?!!? Unfortunately, the film has no idea on how humans actually function.
Arthur Brennan (Matthew McConaughey) opens the film by parking at an airport and leaving his keys in an unlocked car. He has a one-way ticket to Japan, where he winds up in the Japanese suicide forest where something like 35 people successfully kill themselves every year. Setting out some sort of package addressed to Joan Brennan, he then proceeds to start killing himself one goddamned pill at a time. Slowest suicide ever.
In the midst of his suicide (two long pills in), Arthur encounters a Japanese man, Takumi Nakamura (Ken Watanabe), wandering around the forest looking hurt and lost. Takumi, it seems, tried to kill himself and is now trying to find his way out of this forest but he seems to have lost the path. Seeing somebody more helpless than him puts Arthur in hero mode to help Takumi find the trail…but, now they’re both lost in the sea of trees. Those metaphors are about as deep as this film gets. Takumi attempted suicide because he was fired from work and was saving his family from dishonor. But, nobody cares about Takumi. This isn’t his movie. This is all about the white dude.
The reason Arthur is attempting suicide is because he lost his job and spent three years as an underpaid adjunct professor to the chagrin of his wife, Joan (Naomi Watts). She’s the breadwinner of the family and resents that Arthur is not making enough money and is spending his time wanking off trying to write a paper to get published in some magazine. He resents that she resents him. Because of these new “economic pressures” – how poor are they? They’re so poor they go to fancy wine dinners with their friends – Arthur and Joan snipe at each other in some pitiful knock-off edition of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? That is, until cancer intercedes…
Meanwhile, Takumi and Arthur find themselves in a bromance of sorts that includes pantsless campfires and discussions of children’s stories. While trying to find their way out of the forest, they face challenges in the form of natural disasters (rainstorms, landslides, tall slippery rocks, etc). You see, the suicide forest is mysterious and spiritual and hides the paths from everybody who enter it, and it totally messes up your compass so you can’t ever escape. It’s the Bermuda Triangle of forests, but much more depressed.
The hamfisted screenplay isn’t helped by the bored-to-death central performances. The only person who redeems himself in this production is Kasper Tuxen, the cinematographer. His rendering of the forest is lush and mysterious, always framed in a manner to fully evoke the spirituality that this film wishes it evoked. Gus Van Sant should know better, but it seems like he doesn’t even want to be here. He even lets Arthur get away with a brief moment of gay panic that neither adds to the movie nor makes sense with his character. I’m not even going to talk about the ending which is just ridiculous.
Somehow, this movie cost $25m. And, yet, everybody seems like they’re sleeping on the job. If there’s one image that sums up The Sea of Trees, it comes from Kevin Smith:
