Dawn and Peter O’Neil live with their kids in rural Queensland in a ramshackle house shaded by a gigantic Moreton Bay fig tree (which took the filmmakers weeks to find, apparently…it’s really quite magnificent). Clearly, the family are not materially wealthy, but life is good. Then tragedy strikes: Peter has a fatal heart attack. The film (a French-Australian co-production) focuses on Dawn and 8-year-old daughter, Simone, as they struggle to come to terms with their loss.
Simone finds solace in the heart of the tree – a junction of trunk and branches, where she sets up a shrine to her father. She fancies she can hear him talking to her through the rustling leaves, and in time entrusts her mother with her secret. Dawn, too, comes to associate her late husband with the tree, which sends its hyper-fast-growing roots out to embrace the house, as if in response.
The tree’s benevolent mood takes a sinister turn when a relationship develops between Dawn and a local plumber: a massive branch breaks off, crashing through the roof and coming to rest across her bed! Lotsa symbolism happening here…and there’s more. Frankly, it’s all a bit laboured by the end of the movie.
Obviously, then, this film operates partly on a lyrical level, but there is a problem here – a clash, rather than a happy confluence, between poetry and realism. Continue reading ‘The Tree’ – Movie Review