Heart of Oak – first-look review

As William Blake once put it: ​“To some peo­ple a tree is some­thing so incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful that it brings tears to the eyes. To oth­ers it is just a green thing that stands in the way.” Trees are such a vis­cer­al metaphor for proverb, axiom, and even philo­soph­i­cal debate (let’s not get into the whole tree-falling-no-one-there dis­cus­sion) that they’re a pan­cul­tur­al icon for the con­veyance of con­cepts and ide­olo­gies. Not to men­tion their lit­er­al agency in our ecosys­tem. A tree of life indeed.

French film­mak­ers Lau­rent Char­bon­nier and Michel Sey­doux have mould­ed a word­less doc­u­men­tary that cel­e­brates their mag­nif­i­cence. Heart of Oak spends a cal­en­dar year in the life of a stat­uesque, 210-year-old oak tree. Shar­ing a spir­it with Vik­tor Kosakovskiy’s ice-and-water doc­u­men­tary, Aquarela, the result is a hyp­not­ic assault on the sens­es that cap­tures the beau­ty and might of our nat­ur­al world. 

Sea­sons change, leaves fall, but the cast across 80-min­utes stay broad­ly the same. Birds, mice, and a soli­tary red squir­rel vie for space along­side oth­er mam­mals and insects. The tree comes across like nature’s very own social – and some­what anti-social – ten­e­ment block. Noisy neigh­bours bick­er inces­sant­ly, their cacoph­o­ny soaked up and sub­sumed into the rest of the forest.

Although vast sec­tions are thank­ful­ly unadorned by sound­track, Char­bon­nier and Sey­doux deploy some music to accen­tu­ate the mood and manip­u­late emo­tions. Time lapse pho­tog­ra­phy, inno­v­a­tive cam­er­a­work and imag­i­na­tive edit­ing also play their part. Humour abounds, for instance, when the roman­tic throb of Dean Martin’s ​‘Sway with Me’ accom­pa­nies two acorn wee­vils cop­u­lat­ing clum­si­ly in broad daylight.

The impos­ing oak tree also proves to be not mere­ly a climb­ing frame, but an obser­va­tion tow­er too. A north­ern goshawk spies a small­er bird from its branch­es and tears after it in a pul­sat­ing chase sequence that would be the envy of a high-end action block­buster. Nature at its most bru­tal, devoid of chore­og­ra­phy, it’s heart-in-your-mouth and mesmerising. 

So too is the sight of crea­tures park­our­ing from branch to branch and leaf to leaf. Although a famil­iar sight to many from David Attenborough’s beloved BBC nature doc­u­men­taries, shorn of his rich nar­ra­tion, or any nar­ra­tion at all, there is some­thing espe­cial­ly beguil­ing when the mind is per­mit­ted to wan­der amid the unfold­ing sto­ries from the forest. 

It might be high praise, but if Ver­tov were alive and had some­how turned his hands to nature films, you could make a good argu­ment that they would look some­thing like this vir­tu­osic off­ing. There are no words and yet it speaks vol­umes. Heart of Oak is impres­sive­ly executed.

And what do we learn or, at the very least, what are we remind­ed of? That trees can simul­ta­ne­ous­ly be both a mater­ni­ty ward and a grave­yard; a sanc­tu­ary and a bat­tle­ground; a place where seren­i­ty and chaos coexist.