Trees, and Other Entanglements

It's a different approach. It highlights the stories of people in contrast to the trees, which are often generations old. If you think about it that way, each tree might have a thousand stories. The documentary also highlights how fragile trees are. I know this. I have a few acres and lost about 20 trees in a tornado. I've spent the last four years planting about 100 or so trees of which perhaps 60 are alive. My point being, they are easy to destroy, but hard to reestablish. We need trees. And they can grow back. Subduing the earth does not mean destroying it. Good stewardship is vital. It's part of all of our stories.

Ultimately, not sure what this film was actually about. At the outset, it implied that it was all about trees. Okay. But although each segment did have something to do with trees, it often wandered off into people's personal stories that had only superficial relevance to trees. In addition, many of the segments seemed to circle back to things to do with Weyerhauser. Yes there were some segments that didn't, but those seemed to be included as "window dressing" to lure the viewer into watching the segments that were related to Weyerhauser. All in all, this "documentary" seemed very disjointed and lacked focus. I found myself asking "who cares" and "relevance?" about big segments of this film. If you love nature, the environment and trees, you won't find a lot here actually addressing that in any meaningful way as it meandered off into pointless "personal" stories that were largely off topic. Very disappointing and confusing. I gave it 3 stars because some of the photography was beautiful.

This movie is really about how trees are "useful" to people, as well as a hagiography to Weyerhauser. Far from being inspired by "The Overstory", it is almost devoid of either the science of trees, or the feelings people have as the great forests are being destroyed. Sure, lots of shots of miles of felled trees, but then we learn that hey, Weyerhauser has planted 2 billion trees. We even meet the ex-hippies that planted alot of them. What we don't learn is that by planting them as mono-crops, they are destroying what was once a diverse ecosystem, and merely delaying the inevitable environmental collapse and the soil gets depleted. There is no spirit of investigation, of challenging power (so central to "The Overstory"), and for a film set in the Pacific Northwest, not a word about Native Americans!

As a lover of trees and nature, I was immediately hooked when seeing the thumbnail on HBO. But unfortunately the doc failed to deliver value past the cover. The story feels scattered and the storytellers did a poor job of making me feel invested in the characters or the picture they were trying to paint. It could have been the Mona Lisa- but instead it feels more like a childs crayon drawing on the street. Mid-way in a grown-ass woman is hysterially crying about her parents cherry tree being cut down years ago, which was supposed to be a powerful moment of empathy. But instead it made me feel unsettled, wishing that the filmmaker would lay down the camera and get that women to a therapist ASAP. After one hour of watching, Im honestly not even sure what point the doc is trying to make. It somehow made me feel less appealed to both trees and humans at the same time. Which is impressive. Spend the 1 HR 49 MIN out in the woods instead, it will be far more rewarding. A solid 3/10.