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.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
RSS