The Sea of Trees – first look review

Ever since his mid-career rein­ven­tion as a seri­ous char­ac­ter actor, there hasn’t been a sin­gle blot on Matthew McConaughey’s report card. His unde­ni­able range and star wattage have vir­tu­al­ly afford­ed him carte blanche in Hol­ly­wood. And that’s no bad thing – right now we’d watch just about any­thing with him in. Accord­ing­ly, the imme­di­ate feel­ing of watch­ing The Sea of Trees is one of crush­ing regret. Not at wit­ness­ing the first bad post-McConais­sance per­for­mance, more a deep, hope­less long­ing for all the prospec­tive parts turned down in its favour.

It’s easy to pic­ture McConaugh­ey speed dial­ing his agent as soon as Chris Sparling’s script land­ed in his in-tray. Not only does it boast a name direc­tor, tal­ent­ed sup­port­ing cast and weighty sub­ject mat­ter, the entire sto­ry hinges on a phys­i­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly demand­ing lead role that has ​‘awards-con­tender’ splashed all over it in big, glis­ten­ing man tears. Alas, the fin­er nuances of McConaughey’s tow­er­ing per­for­mance are all but lost amid the dense pre­ten­sions of Gus Van Sant’s turgid qua­si-philo­soph­i­cal feels-fest.

A less­er yet not insignif­i­cant objec­tion con­cerns the name of McConaughey’s char­ac­ter: Arthur Bren­nan. It’s a triv­ial detail to pick up on per­haps, but sure­ly some­one of McConaughey’s stature com­mands a cool, slight­ly edgy name like Coop­er or Rust. Arthur? It just doesn’t suit him. The pre­sumed intent here is to under­line McConaughey’s every­man cre­den­tials, which makes sense in so far as he’s play­ing a physics pro­fes­sor, and any aca­d­e­m­ic worth his salt should have a prop­er, intel­lec­tu­al sound­ing name like Arthur. Yet the film is so height­ened in its the­atri­cal­ly, so exces­sive in its sym­bol­ic lit­er­al­i­sa­tion, that his char­ac­ter might as well have been called Dirk Pitt for all the dif­fer­ence it would make.

We meet Arthur on the first leg of a som­bre pil­grim­age to Aoki­ga­hara, aka the Sea of Trees, a thick for­est and pop­u­lar sui­cide spot that stretch­es out from the north­west base of Mount Fuji in Japan. Real­ly, though, his sto­ry begins sev­er­al months ear­li­er, as revealed in flash­back via a series of increas­ing­ly shouty and/​or cloy­ing exchanges with his wife, Joan (Nao­mi Watts), that grad­u­al­ly estab­lish the source of his malaise. He’s not pulling his weight finan­cial­ly, she’s got a mild drink­ing prob­lem. It’s your stan­dard white per­son prob­lems routine.

Back in the forest/​present, the film’s meta­phys­i­cal sub­text kicks in when Arthur is dis­tract­ed by a mys­te­ri­ous Japan­ese man (Ken Watan­abe) stag­ger­ing through the under­growth. Blood­ied and clear­ly in a great deal of dis­tress, Arthur does the decent Amer­i­can thing by offer­ing to show this con­fused lost soul on his way, only to wind up sim­i­lar­ly dis­ori­ent­ed as the film veers sharply into Deliv­er­ance ter­ri­to­ry (minus the ban­jos and sodomy). From here on in McConaugh­ey wastes no time in flex­ing his dra­mat­ic mus­cle while rel­ish­ing every oppor­tu­ni­ty to make Bear Grylls look like a puny Boy Scout as he and Watan­abe endure a par­tic­u­lar­ly rough night. If only the film had any inten­tion of being an hon­est-to-good­ness sur­vival thriller.

Despite inevitably bond­ing over the course of their shared ordeal, a con­sid­er­able amount of time pass­es before either man for­mal­ly intro­duces him­self. Were it not for the heavy-hand­ed­ness with which Van Sant builds up to this moment, it would hard­ly bear men­tion­ing. Yet it’s here that the film’s odd pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the ety­mol­o­gy of Japan­ese names is exposed – the man­ner in which Watanabe’s Naka­mu­ra Taku­mi announces his and his fam­i­ly mem­bers’ names serv­ing to accom­mo­date West­ern audi­ences’ igno­rance towards Asian cul­ture. Appar­ent­ly com­fort­able in its appro­pri­a­tion of for­eign beliefs and cus­toms, The Sea of Trees touts a vari­ety of lazy stereo­types in the hope of say­ing some­thing vague­ly pro­found about how the process­es of grief and guilt dif­fer in oth­er cul­tures. (Spoil­er: it doesn’t.)

The uni­ver­sal themes broached here are intrigu­ing enough on their own terms, but it’s hard to shake off the sus­pi­cion that Spar­ling and Van Sant have opt­ed for this exot­ic set­ting sim­ply because, y’know, Japan­ese peo­ple are all so mys­ti­cal and spir­i­tu­al. Ulti­mate­ly there is not a hint of pathos to be gleaned from this cliché-rid­den para­ble. Only the tru­ism that as long as Matthew McConaugh­ey is around there is always rea­son to go on.