The tangled, gloomy forest of Aokigahara, which sits near the base of Mt. Fuji, serves as the main setting for Gus Van Sant’s melodramatic story The Sea of Trees. Full of dense woods and greenery, and also a foreboding silence, the forest has its beauty and its darkness: it’s a place where some people go for respite and nature, but where others go to end their lives.
It’s where Arthur Brennan (played by Matthew McConaughey) immediately goes — at least, that is, after buying a one-way ticket, flying with little belongings and no luggage, and arriving in a taxi outside the entrance to Aokigahara. As the bespectacled, scruffy, dazed-liked Arthur walks through the entrance there are signs of warning and hope placed regularly about. “You only have one life, take care of it,” says one; another says to think of your family, your parents. There is still hope.
Van Sant alternates between the present and past as we observe Arthur and his wife, Joan (Naomi Watts). It’s a relationship that’s been rough for years and hardly ever at peace. The rational, analytical minded Arthur was once a scientist at Northlab but decided to quit. Apparently the job was too much stress — or was it that the job was too much stress on the other spouse? Who you ask in this couple determines the right answer, the true reality.
In any case, Arthur found a meager paying job as an adjunct professor and stuck with it, despite Joan thinking it was only going to be temporary. Joan, herself a real-estate agent, pays the mortgage and earns a real salary. But she’s also an alcoholic, and has been for some time, though it was exacerbated when Arthur had an affair with a co-worker. It’s no surprise that throughout the movie we see the two bicker and yell and throw things, pick at unhealed wounds with insults and cruel remarks, mock and put down, and proudly point out the mistakes of the other. It’s an ugly picture.
We go back and forth between scenes of domestic un-bliss and the forest, the latter where Arthur, upon arriving, soon encounters a bloodied and dazed man, named Takumi (Ken Watanabe). Arthur steers him in the right direction to head out of Aokigahara. But it turns out not to be so easy. And as Arthur and Takumi face a series of challenges inside the treacherous Sea of Trees, their slowly evolving conversations reveal their stories. During one of their many exchanges, Takumi says to Arthur that “Things are not what they seem here.” It’s an apt line, and Ken Watanabe plays the subdued, thoughtful, soft-spoken Takumi so well, as do Matthew McConaughey and Naomi Watts, with their respective characters.
But the movie just doesn’t quite work, and it’s miles away in quality to Van Sant’s great movies like Good Will Hunting. To be sure, there are scenes of success, and there are moments of truly poignant artistic and emotional power. But these alone can’t make up for the generally clunky and unevenly paced movie — which, relatedly, suffers from being an odd conglomeration of various moods, themes, and styles. There is also at least one, probably two, plot devices which are so mawkish and manipulative that the sickening feeling you may get after watching the scenes is almost certainly warranted.
That being said, the movie is not an unmitigated disaster, as more than a few critics and fans of Gus Van Sant have opined. The Sea of Trees, even if it drops the ball many times and in various ways, actually does a rather effective job at bringing up some interesting things to ponder. Arthur’s scientific temperament, for instance, contrasts sharply with the mystical Takumi, which can and should lead one to consider a number of other related comparisons (more could be said but not without potentially giving too much away). Likewise, the subtle gestures of kindness and the way in which human nature sometimes wants to attack, yet love and protect at the same time, is well portrayed.
The Sea of Trees is not anywhere near a great film, and only at times even hovers around the level of a good film. But it’s still worth watching, especially if one’s willing to be open-minded to the vision of its esteemed director.
Spectatio 