There is a vein in Australian cinema that might be dated back to Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout in 1971, which casts the country’s wilderness, and the mysterious powers that it embodies, as a principal actor in a human emotional drama. The Tree, an Australian-French coproduction directed by Julie Bertucelli, is every inch part of this very Australian tradition. Moreover, although the film takes its material from a novel by Australian author Judy Pascoe titled Our Father Who Art in the Tree, it is never subservient to its literary source.
The plot is simple. The O’Neils are a family living happily on their property in the backwoods of Queensland. Husband Peter (Aden Young) is a driver of huge semi-trailers delivering prefabricated houses to isolated towns in the sparsely inhabited interior. Wife Dawn (Charlotte Gainsbourg) stays at home with the four kids. A brisk opening sequence shows a relaxed and loving relationship between husband and wife, and establishes a close bond between Peter and his second child Simone (Morgana Davies). A heart attack takes Peter out of the picture and leaves Dawn utterly devastated and her children struggling to find their own means of coping with their grief.
Simone believes that the spirit of her father speaks through a giant Morton Bay fig tree in their garden, and her mystical bond with the tree even begins to affect Dawn, who has been cast adrift by the loss of her husband.
Photo Courtesy of CatchPlay
Reports about the making of the film state that it took two years of location scouting to “cast” the tree, which is given a powerful presence by Nigel Bluck’s widescreen cinematography, looming over the family, sometimes protectively, sometimes threateningly. Its root system, pushed by drought, spreads outward during the course of the film and begins to undermine the house and cause disruption to neighboring properties. The tree is not an easy presence to live with, but this makes it all the more powerful in the lives of the O’Neils.
It would be conventional for the picture to drift into a psychological or even a supernatural thriller at this point, but Bertucelli firmly rejects this avenue, firmly anchoring the story in minor and not-so-minor trials and tribulations of family life in a harsh rural environment. While a supernatural interpretation is left open, the director refuses to allow the viewer any clear resolution as to where she stands.
Life simply isn’t that easy, she seems to be saying, and the spiritual and mundane intermingle in ways that are not always easy to distinguish or define. Is the whole thing about the tree just a willful child’s fantasy? And if so, can this fantasy manufacture something akin to reality?
Certainly Dawn finds her own solace in the tree after tentatively embracing her daughter’s imaginary world, but this works directly against her equally tentative efforts to get on with life and put sorrow behind her. A brief and difficult relationship springs up between Dawn and George (Marton Csokas), a local contractor. He tries to win Dawn over with practical assistance, and warns her of the danger of the tree, as the root system blocks plumbing and a dead branch falls and knocks in a wall of the house. This brings him into direct conflict with Simone, who sees him as a threat to the memory of her father.
The Tree is a rigorously crafted family drama. Gainsbourg and Davies put in understated but tremendously committed performances as mother and child, bound together by blood and memory. Their demands on life, naturally enough, are vastly different and conflict is inevitable. While Dawn tests the waters with George, Simone takes to living in the tree, talking to its branches and terrifying her mother as she climbs high into its protective canopy. These two central roles are ably supported by other child actors, who make up the rest of the O’Neil household. The well-judged performances, which avoid attempts at the pert or ingratiating, root Simone’s extravagant beliefs in the hopes, dreams and fears of ordinary childhood.
Images of the huge Morton Bay fig and the vast scrub land in which it stands, the mingling colors of the earth and the sky, and the sound of the wind in the tree branches are all allowed to hint at powers greater than the individuals who are utterly dwarfed by the vastness that surrounds them. Bertucelli offers up no answers, but paints us a fascinating picture from which we can draw our own conclusions.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not