The Sea of Trees

I've never considered myself a particularly smart or cultivated person. I should read/have read many more and better books, travelled more and earlier, interacted much more with people that had things to teach, all in all learn much more from everything... cause I've always wanted to have a good understanding of our world. Anyway, and particularly taking into account how the cultural level of our society has dropped in the last decades, I try to think that I could be placed in the "not too idiotic" group of people. However, from time to time something happens that makes me think that maybe I'm much more of a redneck that I would like to think and accept. It has happened lately with my reaction to one film "The Sea of Trees" as it happened more than one year ago with The Last Face, another excellent film.

I watched The Sea of Trees a bit by chance. It was available in the "videotheque" of the multimedia device in the bus carrying me to Madrid. I had plenty of films in my own tablet, but decided to give this one a chance without even checking the wikipedia review. Wow, I loved this film. It felt really powerful to me. One Western middle age guy runs into a Japanese counterpart in The Japanese Suicide Forest where both intended to put an end to their lives... Little by little the story that has brought the Western guy here is revealed. A lost wife, a lost chande for happiness, a lost chance to express feelings, to repair what was not really so broken... and all the remorse that comes with it... A constant reminder of how nothing in our lives can be predicted: falling sick, overcoming it, and suddenly, an abrupt end just when you thought life was showing you its sweet face again... A story of how a real pain can help to erase an unnecessary, self-inflicted past pain and dream of a future... This is a very emotional film, a film to learn from for sure (or more specifically, to study again what I tought was a lesson learned for me and indeed I was starting to forget), a film that hurts, seduces and in the end provides hope, where remorse for the past ends up providing light for the future, easing the wounds that seemed ready to bleed forever...

So well, after watching it I decided to check some reviews, expecting to read how much this work had moved and touched others... but to my surprise most comments were really negative, bordering the insulting... Pretentious, sappy, empty... well, all those are calificatives that could not be further from my experience with this film... then, it's up to you to decide, believe what some cool Cannes critics say, or believe what this boring, uneducated moron says.